Art

The Swiss photographic duo of Jojakim Cortis and Adrian Sonderegger began their collaborative work during their studies at ZHDK in 2005. Collectively, they conceive and manufacture surreal worlds crafting compositions of ‘staged’ photography. Their most well know series titled, Icons (2012 to Present) is a collection of recreations revisiting ‘iconic moments’ in history. The duo use their precision model-making skills to construct three-dimensional miniature dioramas of famous scenes depicted in original photographs. Once the diorama is built, the artists step back to reveal the overall scene of making, including some of the tools and materials used in the final composition, to reveal that the work is indeed an obvious counterfeit of the original. “Cortis & Sonderegger’s works are characterised by a clear aesthetic diction. Their image tricks are satirically created, ingeniously staged and metaphorically back-filled. Objects and people take off, hover, fall… The trade mark in their pictures is the fact that the impossible is nimble and playful, their photographic raw materials are simple fabrics, props and tools. The artificial structure with linkage and equipment, with reductions of foreground and background to an image scenery, with light and smoke machines etc. are often made transparent at the edges of the image, reinforcing the message with digital retouching… the two photographers make themselves known as the true inventors for their visual ideas…”