Elad Lassry
Untitled
Untitled, 2010
C-print, framed, goldfoil, 21.6 x 26.7 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur, gift Michael Ringier
2011-002-003
b. 1977 (Tel Aviv, IL), lives and works in Los Angeles, US
Elad Lassry has images all around him: his archive forms the basis for his artistic work. Like representatives of the 1980s Picture Generation in the US before him, the artist makes use of found images from magazines and other print media. Lassry combines these images with his own photos, putting individual visual elements together to create collages or presenting them as set pieces in their own right, staged against brightly coloured backgrounds. He draws on other images, meanwhile, as inspiration for studio shots in which he photographs a variety of objects as if they were advertising products. The artist presents his works in the format of a magazine page: the frames around the images are colour-coordinated, so that the pictures appear like objects on display. Lassry deploys recurring motifs such as pieces of fruit, which he stages as still lifes in compositions that are almost classical in style, along with depictions of animals and portraits. By taking everyday imagery out of its media context and giving it a new form, Lassry focuses attention on the stream of images that now rain down on us as they circulate freely in an age defined by visual input.