Please Stay Blurry, 2013

Offset print: 100 x 70 cm giveaway poster; edition of 500; wooden rod installed close to the floor.

“Consists of five hundred copies of a giveaway poster stacked against the gallery wall like a sculptural piece. Printed in glossy offset, the image depicts a photo shoot of a couple posing on the peak of a mountain. The subject of the work appears to be the moment in which two lovers enact, capture and record their love. The format and aesthetics of the piece mimics popular mass-produced sentimental posters, with their idealized images of romantic love and their sublime landscapes of desire. But this idealized image is deceptive. The couple is out of focus; the photographer and his assistant are hidden. The decision by the artist to blur the couple is loaded. It refers the thrills and anxieties of uncertain love. But it also breaks away with the conventions of classical photography in which the main subject is sharp. Please Stay Blurry underscores the position of the photographic image as an aesthetically appealing medium regardless of its content, whether its painful, ugly or controversial.” Aleya Hamza