Iris

Press play. Fast forward. Reverse. Skip ahead. There is a prescriptive quality to the language involved in manipulating an image. It combines the fixating compulsion of speech with the capacity to order motion—a sequence of cues, forming a tight loop between fingertip and retina. I like the idea of an image enclosed between edges of flesh, further multiplied by the number of viewers fast-forwarding, reversing, skipping ahead. Perhaps this is where Noémie Degen and Simon Jaton’s dialogue begins. Their work starts with stills drawn from films or videos, later reworked through a multilayered printing protocol. An image makes the cut; it is then printed out in a reduced format, re-scanned, and subjected to several back-and-forths of inkjet printing, hand working, and digital adjustments before being separated into screenprinting frames and, finally, stretched... its source and legibility further obscured by the title-lessness of all pieces. An explicit intention is to resist narrative impulse, stripping words out, blurring the cinematic sequence to replace it with the one composed by the exhibition itself—the only element bearing a name. Noémie Degen (b. 1996, France) and Simon Jaton (b. 1994, Switzerland), live and work in Paris and Lausanne. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Forde (Geneva, CH), Rinde am Rhein (Düsseldorf, DE), Édouard Montassut (Paris, FR), and Diez Gallery (Amsterdam, NL). Their work has been included in group exhibitions at Princesse (Paris, FR), Charim Galerie (Vienna, AT), High Art (Paris, FR), Kunstforum Baloise Park (Basel, CH), King’s Leap (New York, NY), Lovay Fine Arts (Geneva, CH), Die Angewandte (Vienna, AT), and Treize, (Paris, FR).

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105 Henry Street, Store 4 & 5

New York, NY