Thomas Kneubühler: Office 2000

Exhibition

September 3 – October 2, 2004

Project Description

Thomas Kneubühler is fascinated by technology and its impact on human beings.  His previous work shows the impersonal space of airports, or the faces of workers focussed on their computer screens.  People absorbed in thought, cold spaces of transit: for him, these are metaphors of an increasingly virtual reality. Kneubühler’s exhibition at Skol presents a night-time view of downtown Montreal.  It could just as well be downtown New York, Buenos Aires or Rome—the same architectural norms have been imposed everywhere. Kneubühler’s photographs capture anonymous buldings, structures without qualities; he is interested in the way society has standardized contemporary modes of life.  The neutral facades with their grid-like rigidity give way to deserted interiors, which open a space for us to imagine our own bizarre, conventional or romantic narratives.  At nightfall, abandoned buildings become vulnerable to our gaze: this disembodied voyeurism is the subject of Kneubühler’s exhibition.