Get the Look!
What would happen if we let algorithms dress us? This is the question Romain Mader asked himself when he founded Get the Look! He set himself a challenge: to follow the recommendations of his smartphone’s algorithm and order clothes from online stores as suggested, without making any personal choices. Since the algorithm is influenced by his and his partner’s browsing activity, the result would be expected to match their style and personality. In his studio, the artist adopts a number of incongruous postures. By examining the sales techniques and marketing tools used by fast-fashion websites to encourage consumption, the series ironically denounces industry-induced addiction. Through the example of fashion, Mader universally reveals the influence of algorithms on our lives.
Ekaterina
For his first solo exhibition, Romain Mader created a multimedia installation for Espace Images, mixing video, photography and text. He staged himself in Ekaterina, a mockumentary made in an imaginary Ukrainian town. This place was supposedly founded by a group of German investors eager to speculate on the economy of sexual tourism, and was of international repute for the beauty of its women. In this series, that subsequently went on to the Tate Modern in London, the photographer humorously addresses the sense of solitude and awkwardness a young man experiences when faced with the sometimes absurd expectations of contemporary society.
Atomik Magik Circus
In 2011, François Burland (Switzerland, 1958) built a giant 18-meter-long submarine, a colossal endeavor inspired by Cold War imagery. The submersible was presented inside the Théâtre Oriental-Vevey, along with a squadron of toy sculptures: tanks, zeppelins, rockets and satellites. In an environment that played with the aesthetic codes of the Soviet era, Romain Mader and Nadja Kilchhofer (Switzerland, 1988) presented photographic scenes that enhanced the fictional nature of Atomik Magik Circus, a monumental installation fueling dialogue between two generations of artists.
