Fabian Oefner
ARTIST | SCIENTIST from Switzerland
The Explosion Collages are an ongoing project, in which Oefner examines our perception of reality through photography. Each work depicts a portrait photograph being torn apart by a gunshot. What seems to be a genuine image of an ephemeral moment is in fact just an illusion: The artist creates these works by capturing thousands of fragments of the original print and diligently arranging them into a new piece. Oefner`s meticulous precision ultimately results into a hyperrealistic illusion, that shows a real, yet non-existing moment in time.
Today, where most photographs only exist in a digital realm, Oefner returns to the photograph as a physical object. The projectile piercing through the print transforms a two-dimensional image into a three-dimensional object in space. The original subject of the photograph, the portrait remains visible, while at the same time, the kinetic energy of the bullet transforms it into a new piece of art.
Fabian Oefner’s visual expression of the invisible effects of the natural sciences and the properties of time is the genesis of his photography, film and kinetic installations. His art forms encourage us to conceptualize in new ways and to accept that art and science do not exist on opposite ends of the academic spectrum but rather inform each other in tangible ways.
