mathias poledna

i like art that points out the limitations and fallacies of its own medium, so i was excited to see mathias poledna's video installation crystal palace at the hammer museum earlier this year. mathias flew half way across the world to papua new guinea and took two static 30min shots of the jungle, then got on a plane and flew home. drawing its name from the glass building in london that housed the great exhibition of 1851, mathias' project examines the way in which the west attempts to neatly bracket off other cultures for intellectual consumption. more broadly, his work questions the ability of film to exist as anything more than fiction. speaking on the project mathias said, this record "is not an authentic document of anything but the conditions of its own making." this seems to me to be an important concept for film and photography alike. read more about the project here

[all mathias poledna. 2007. stills from crystal palace]