New Artificiality will be officially launched by Louis-José Touron Swiss Ambassador to Ireland on January 30th at 6.30pm.
Catherine’s practice will also be introduced on the evening by Adrienne Wavre from The Photographer’s Agency and curator of swissphotographers .
Curated by the Gallery of Photography Ireland this premiere is uniquely designed for the Gallery’s architectural specifications. Catherine Leutenegger (b. 1983, Switzerland), is a ‘photographic archaeologist’ fascinated by shifts in technology. This is also the first exhibition in our Contemporary Women’s Practice season, celebrating leading women photographers at work today.
Leutenegger’s long-term project New Artificiality investigates the emergence and advancement of 3D printing in a range of different, often surprising contexts. She takes us to China, where a company has built one of the world’s largest 3D printers and is now producing entire houses. The exhibition has as its centrepiece an immersive installation of monumental prints that portray these unlikely buildings. Using a trompe l’oeil technique, they seem to place the viewer inside architectural spaces that are at once strange and familiar. The prints have all been specially created by the artist in response to the Gallery of Photography’s own unique layout.
Additionally, there is a selection from Leutenegger’s related series Welcome Home Baby. As with all her work, these incredibly realistic new-born simulations suggest something deeply uncanny in our evolving relationship to the objects that surround us.