Nightwalker, 2018
Inkjet print on 300gsm Baryta paper, 105 x 70 cm
Nightwalker is a photograph taken during a night walk in London.
Although this photograph appear to us in bright neon-green, they haven’t been retouched of manipulated.
Nevertheless it appear to us as fiction, cinematic shots. The impossibility of reality posing to us, a shiny car parked on a hotel porch lightened by a bright green light around the corner overlaps our understanding of reality and fiction, public spaces and imaginary set designs.
As we approach this porch, certain of its mirage, we realise we are falling into uncanniness and becoming the protagonists of a fictional feature, or a gaming render engine.
The place is in silence and seemingly abandoned - welcoming us. From, far we can hear the noise of the busy streets and police sirens, a likely background soundtrack from Gran-Theft Auto.
Used to be in the comfort of shadows, the group is suddenly divided. The lens of the camera reveals an abrupt adrenaline rush provided by the escapism of a dream-like state of mind barely tied to any space in time.
The car seductively appears as a divine creature, a holy motor, waiting for Carax’s gaze. The nightwalker poses in front of this monumental object of perfect fictional engineering that can so thornily express the tensions of counter-culture aesthetics and capitalistic dreams.
The moment is broken with a shout. The queerness of this moment is interrupted by the harassment of a loud group of individuals.
And we’re reminded why we night walk. Sometimes we’re not welcomed, even in our fictions.
— Joao Gil, 2019
Inkjet print on 300gsm Baryta paper, 105 x 70 cm
5+1 AP
Nightwalker is a photograph taken during a night walk in London.
Although this photograph appear to us in bright neon-green, they haven’t been retouched of manipulated.
Nevertheless it appear to us as fiction, cinematic shots. The impossibility of reality posing to us, a shiny car parked on a hotel porch lightened by a bright green light around the corner overlaps our understanding of reality and fiction, public spaces and imaginary set designs.
As we approach this porch, certain of its mirage, we realise we are falling into uncanniness and becoming the protagonists of a fictional feature, or a gaming render engine.
The place is in silence and seemingly abandoned - welcoming us. From, far we can hear the noise of the busy streets and police sirens, a likely background soundtrack from Gran-Theft Auto.
Used to be in the comfort of shadows, the group is suddenly divided. The lens of the camera reveals an abrupt adrenaline rush provided by the escapism of a dream-like state of mind barely tied to any space in time.
The car seductively appears as a divine creature, a holy motor, waiting for Carax’s gaze. The nightwalker poses in front of this monumental object of perfect fictional engineering that can so thornily express the tensions of counter-culture aesthetics and capitalistic dreams.
The moment is broken with a shout. The queerness of this moment is interrupted by the harassment of a loud group of individuals.
And we’re reminded why we night walk. Sometimes we’re not welcomed, even in our fictions.
— Joao Gil, 2019