Canadian conceptual artist Alan Belcher conceived and realized in 2012 a set of ceramic works transforming an “object”, the universal JPEG icon which is now the main means of access to all dematerialized photographs. It seems like a simple idea, but it’s very important one in the career of an artist who devoted all his work to images and their transformation into an object.
This ceramic icon, no larger than an A4 sheet but thick enough to become a polychrome object and varnished enough for its surface to take on a particular density, Alan Belcher makes a sophisticated use, making it take on the role of paintings to which it would have substituted.
Arranging them in groups, so that they are the best in the manner in which one traditionally hangs drawing series, or isolates them by three on a wall as one would hang an important triptych; having them other times like the icons on a computer screen or those of a zip file that one would unpack, they place them in the situations become ordinary works of art.
Photography from Le Consortium Gallery
