Catalogue > At random

The Lost Object is the final video in a trilogy that examines the complex mechanisms of how we perceive the constructed nature of reality?and how this construction is performed, both in the realm our imagination and the one of film. As curator Cuauhtémoc Medina notes in a recent monograph dedicated to Diaz Morale’s work, the artist approaches film as a “factory of simulacra” a conceptual thread that carries throughout his trilogy, which began with Insight (2012) and was followed by Suspension (2014). A slow, steady shot travels into the set of The Lost Object, accompanied by the din of a whirring film reel that seems to methodically introduce the viewer into a world of artifice: a soundstage containing the set of a curiously dated, yet nonetheless anonymous room. The scenario slowly begins to unravel, disarticulating both the language and apparatus of filmmaking. Following Jean Baudrillard?s notion that the world has disappeared behind its own representation and therefore its impossible to return to it, The Lost Object proposes a new world in which fiction and reality merge into one single element. In this universe, fiction is autonomous and auto-generates itself.

Sebastiàn Díaz Morales was born in Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina, in 1975 and lives and works in Amsterdam. He attended the Universidad del Cine de Antón in Argentina from 1993-1999, the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam from 2000-2001, and Le Fresnoy Studio des Arts Contemporains in Roubaix, France from 2003-2004. His work has been exhibited widely, including solo shows and presentations at Tate Modern, London; Center Pompidou, Paris; Miro Fundation, Barcelona; Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam; CAC, Vilnius; Le Fresnoy, Roubaix, France; Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, Germany and group shows at De Appel, Amsterdam; Art in General, NY; Ludwin Museum Budapest, Bienale Sao Pablo; Biennale of Sydney; MUDAM, Luxemburg; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. His work is represented in numerous collections, including Center Pompidou, Paris; Tate modern, London; Fundacion Jumex, Mexico; Sandretto Foundation, Torino; Sammlung-Goetz, Munich; Fundacion de Arte Moderna, Museo Berardo, Lisboa; Kadist Foundation, San Francisco. He was a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009