Untitled TV I presents contemporary existence portrait where "TV" perhaps references television/screen mediating reality—subject existing within hostile world where daily survival requires absurd object-costumes documented through new realist lens. Etem's 2012 figurative photography captures essence of ser cosa in contemporary context: being thing-human hybrid becomes normal when territories prove inhospitable to pure humanity. Untitled TV I explores how mundane industrial objects (perhaps TV-related technology) adorn bodies creating strange yet familiar presence: "humans too human" navigating mundo hostil with absurd adaptations that reveal contemporary experience truth. The portrait documents being human when world resists humanity—subjects inhabiting inhospitable conditions (environmental, social, economic) where fusing with things becomes survival necessity, camera honoring rather than mocking this hybrid existence, new realism capturing daily development in hostile territories where contemporary survival demands object-costumes creating meeting place between human essence and thing requirements.
This series of portraits that at first glance appear to us as extraterrestrial beings, once we understand the images they become more familiar than they appear, “humans too human” perhaps more human than they appear. And for Adorno's negative dialectic, the problem was given as a human being in a world hostile to humans, the characters of Etem seem so natural to us to the extent that their presence is outside the pose of the portraits of the kings of the past, rather resemble the workers, peasants, common people in general, portrayed by Gustave Courbet or the realists of the mid-19th century, these new realists are captured by the camera in the usual development of their daily lives, in the hostile world of the desert or the swamp or the storm…”
Contemporary existence portrait documenting thing-human daily survival—new realist photography honoring absurd adaptations. Untitled TV I from Ser Cosa by Rodrigo Etem. Available at The Art Design Project, Miami Beach.
Contemporary Existence Portrait – Untitled TV I, 2012 by Rodrigo Etem
Untitled TV I, 2012
From the series Ser Cosa
Archival pigment print on fine art paper
Dimensions: 22 H x 40 W in.
Edition of 7
Unframed
Rodrigo Etem was born in 1977 in Mendoza, Argentina, he studied Administration at the Universidad del Aconcagua. He attended workshops with Fabiana Barreda, Esteban Álvarez, Ananké Asseff, Eugenio Echeverría (Spain). He received grants from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Fondo Argentino de Desarrollo Cultural, Fondo Provincial de Cultura, Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación. His work surreptitiously investigates and works on concepts that seek to disseminate questions about our daily experience. The artist held solo exhibitions such as: “Hasta encontrar otro amarillo” (Imagen Galería, Mendoza 2018), “Instrucciones para no hacer nada” (Espacio Rivadavia 645, Mendoza 2016), “Probable” (Casa Colmena, Mendoza 2016), “Ser Cosa” (Museo Pumapungo Cuenca, Ecuador 2015), “Ser Cosa” (Museo Antropológico y de Arte Contemporáneo, Guayaquil. Ecuador 2012).He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions. Highlights: “La marca original” (CCK, Buenos Aires 2019), “Poéticas Políticas” (Parque de la Memoria, Buenos Aires 2016), “Dura lex sed lex” (Bienal Sur. Centro Cultural Parque de España, Rosario)
