Winston Wächter Fine Art, New York is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works from photographer Margeaux Walter. Walter uses photography, video, and lenticulars to create meticulously staged social satires. Her work critically examines the ways in which the abundance of technology, advertising, and consumerism in our modern world obscures and alters our identities. Using the visual cues of advertising– staged environments and studio lighting– her work offers us an alternative campaign for the psychological effects of modern life.
Walter uses herself as a model in each of her works, allowing her to experience the scenes first hand and also complicating and blurring the identities of the photographer and the subject. Using costumes, wigs and make-up, Walter takes on multiple roles as diverse characters and reveals the multiple personas and saturation of identities that our image-oriented society has created.
In many of her images, the subjects are consumed and camouflaged by the objects and materials around them. T-shirts, posters, prints, these familiar markers of our society threaten to completely obscure the barely visible human forms hiding within them. Despite the darker implications of the work, Walter is able to strike a playful note, and finding the lost human presence becomes a sort of Where’s Waldo. The bright colors and vibrant patterns that fill the images, such as the collage of “Keep Calm” posters in one work, and the tongue-in-cheek titles of the works, such as iHeart, also contribute a humorous element.
In Walter’s lenticular work, each piece is comprised of two images, which shift as the viewer passes in front of it. The first image represents a stereotypical event based on how everyday life is portrayed in advertisements. The second image reveals a psychological response to that scene and the routines, rituals and stereotypes embedded within it. A couple taking a selfie are drowned in a sea of cellphones; a traditional dinner table is shrouded in a suffocating dust; choosing an outfit to wear culminates into a deluge of clothing. Walter’s sharp eye and wit provides us with a studied caricature of our society and of the anxieties we regularly choose to ignore.
Margeaux Walter was born in Seattle, Washington and currently works and resides in New York City. She studied at the Maine Photographic Workshops, Tisch School of the Arts (NYU), and Hunter College. Her works have been exhibited in museums and private collections across the country and have been featured in publications including The New York Times, New York Post, Seattle Times, Boston Globe and Scene Magazine.
Also on view beginning January 12th, Margeaux Walter billboard project “Keep Calm” located on Greenpoint Avenue in Sunnyside Queens. #KeepCalm14x48.
