Get the Look!

For his second solo exhibition at Galerie Dix9, Romain Mader presents Get the Look!, a project shown for the first time in its entirety with video and photographies mounted as sculptures. In line with his previous works, the artist creates a fictional narrative and stages himself in order to critically and ironically evaluate the contradictions of «fast fashion», the result of an aggressive marketing generated by excessive and intrusive use of algorithms.

The project begins with a browsing activity on clothing sales sites that offer an incessant flow of new items to satisfy an artificially stimulated demand. Brands and platforms are constantly using algorithms to identify buyer profiles and encourage them to continuously order new items. Following their recommendations, Romain Mader buys clothes of different colors and textures, then wears them and photographs himself before returning them. In a sculptural approach, the artist stages each photograph on a background composed of discarded and unusable pieces of clothing that he recovers.

This project with a performative dimension that mobilizes the use of photography
relates to the practice of disguise in a critical and ironic perspective. The artist confronts the viewer with the phenomenon of blind and continuous overconsumption, indifferent to the social and environmental consequences it entails. Individuals’ purchasing behaviours have become the core of brands’ business strategy, making their customers the prey of a system governed by the reign of algorithms. Decision-making is altered and thwarted by suggested looks. They convey the urgency of complying with trends and the conformity of the typified modes of representation of brands, taking precedence over individuality and originality.
Get the Look! appears as a gallery of playful and sarcastic self-portraits that present variations around contemporary issues of vanity, super ego and the illusion of singularity.