Chamber of Deputies [annex IX] #2, Brasília

Vincent Fournier

2012 · Inkjet print on Hahnemühle Baryta Paper mounted to Dibond · Modern and Contemporary Art

This intimate photograph by French artist Vincent Fournier portrays the interior of the Annex of the Chamber of Deputies in Brasilia, one of many iconic buildings in a city almost entirely designed by the country’s great architect Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012). Despite being taken almost fifty years after the building’s completion, the image is ambiguous in its age. It is this careful control of light that enables the viewer to recognize the many different textures that correspond to the different materiality. The light, the choreographic location of the body, and the shooting point produce a perfectly balanced image that enacts a hyperreality closer to a stage set-up. The artist offers a human dimension as a foil to the urban-scale modernist event of Niemeyer’s Brasilia; a little and lonely human presence in an architecture so grand.

Artist

Vincent Fournier

Date

2012

Medium

Inkjet print on Hahnemühle Baryta Paper mounted to Dibond

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

Purchase, Roy R. and Marie S. Neuberger Foundation Inc. Gift, 2016