Ed Atkins, »Untitled«, 2013

Untitled, 2013
Digital print on Claro Silk 170g matt paper
50 x 70 cm
Edition of 25, signed on back

Whether in his video works, or in his collages, the textured surfaces of Ed Atkins (1982, England) celebrate the synthetic and the hyperreal in all their flawed glory. 
 
»The poster is excessive; it’s constitutive layers each operating at some shrill pitch of representational acuity. As in, it's all high def and super-saturated – excessively real in its sharpened artifice. It's all effect, of course. Lens flares, textures, tanned figure, a swatch of glistening wounds; all of them are fake, either computer generated or otherwise imitation. In their desire to convince they well describe their fraudulence. As a poster, I suppose it might advertise some gruesome sub-category of stock imagery – 'stock' understood as a reduction and an intensification. It also relates to a new video work completed around the same time, Warm, Warm, Warm Spring Mouths, from which the protagonist is taken – a CG model who goes under 'Dave'– is shorn of his luscious hair and tanned by the light of a digital sun.« (Ed Atkins)

Recent solo shows of his work have taken place at Kunsthaus Bregenz (2019), Gallery Isabella Bortolozzi (2018), and Martin-Gropius Bau (2018). Ed Atkins lives in London. 

Read a portrait of Ed Atkins in Issue #35, available here.