Singles, 2017.

Jean-Marc Bustamante, Singles

13 October – 18 November 2017

Jean-Marc Bustamante’s solo exhibition Singles circles around how works are influenced by time. Paintings, sculptures, and photographs made over a longer period of time for a number of different places are presented as singles, isolated from their previous contexts. The exhibition examines how time makes works autonomous but also isolates them: ”As they grow older, artworks isolate, stand alone, they take a more and more singular position, on their own like in life,” says Bustamante. Yet in the title Singles there is also a humorous undertone referencing the music single, the single pop hit, which is released detached. In that way, the title becomes an unceremonious equalization of the autonomous work of art and the mass distributed pop song. The exhibition’s title alludes, as an understated commentary, to the collector’s way of choosing his or her works by picking and compiling out of the enthusiasm for the individual work. And last but not least, the title and the many works that are gathered in the exhibition, while still being separated from each other, point to one of modern Western society’s most significant lifeforms: the single.

The establishment of a dialogue between different media runs through all of Jean-Marc Bustamante’s oeuvre. A dialogue unfolds in Singles between photograph and painting as well as between image and sculpture, where the works combine techniques from the photograph with both drawn and computer-enlarged motifs and sculptural elements. In several of his works, he uses serigraph printing techniques, like the works printed on transparent plexiglass which are mounted with a couple of centimeters between the work and the wall. As such the works place themselves in a space between two-dimensional image and three-dimensional object, where the light permeating the motifs adds a transience to the works.