Daniel Faust | Aesthetics of Quantity
Daniel Faust will present his work in the context of Andreas Spiegl’s lecture on Media Theories II that is focusing on the history of the example.
An example implicitly indicates a reference to other things or situations that it is representing. An example is perceived as one of others next to it. It shares common features with the subjects that it stands for and yet it differs from them due to its exemplarity. It belongs to them on the basis that it is abstracted from them, taken out from the context, isolated for the sake of representation. Here is the point where examples and media merge into politics of representation: In which way does exemplarity become an immanent feature of media? Does the usage of media intrinsically mediate a sense of exemplarity? E.g. in which way is the decision to taking a picture analogically linked to the transformation of a motif into an example? In which way is the choice of a medium related to the question of how to enter specific social and cultural domains of exemplarity, e.g. the domains of arts or social media?
An example that stands for others, it represents more than itself and is signifying a quantity of similar things or situations that are following the singled out and exceptional status of it: Representing one of many, it implicitly addresses aesthetics of quantity. The work of Daniel Faust gathers an increasing body or archive of images that question the status of exemplarity of each selected motif. In the horizon of Faust’s thousands of images the question arises in which way the possibility of becoming an example is potentially embedded in every single moment, just waiting for the chance to get visible in the frame of exemplarity. Faust’s artistic practice also includes the other way round by disposing even singular and highlighted examples and exhibited objects into the realm of numerous similarities, retranslating the exceptional into a state of multitude – if you like – politically into a representation of democracy.
Daniel Faust is a photographer whose archive presently consists of 35,000 images from travels across the United States, Europe, Asia, South Africa, the Middle East, Brazil, India, New Zealand and elsewhere.
Faust is exhibiting Silicon, a series of six sizable photographs 5 x 25 linear ft, in Life in Picoseconds at Le Laboratoire Cambridge, MA; March to June 2017. His most recent solo exhibit was at Norma Mangione Gallery, Torino, Italy autumn 2016. His photographs have been exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Arsenal Biennale, Kiev; Ural Biennial, Ekaterinburg, Russia; Museum Van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp, Belgium; Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; Istanbul Biennial, Turkey; Vienna Secession, Austria; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; documenta, Kassel, Germany; American Fine Arts Co, New York; and The New Museum, New York.
His work has been published in Mousse Magazine ; Contemporary Art Daily ; The Art Newspaper ; Atlántica ; Harvard University Press and L’Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts ; Der Standard ; Parkett ; Artforum ; Flash Art ; Aperture and The New York Times .
Faust has been invited to present his work in April, 2017 at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Curatorial Program, Torino, Italy; ARIA, Antwerp Research Institute of the Arts, Antwerp University and Institute of Arts and Cultural Studies, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien.
He has given a variety of talks, presentations, and workshops at Rodchenko School, Moscow, Russia; ACT, Art Cultural and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; Icel Arts Club, Mersin, Turkey, the 10th International Istanbul Biennial Program (supported by U.S. State Department and U.S. Consulate General in Istanbul); University of California, Los Angeles; Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York; Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich; Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Kunst Städelschule, Frankfurt; Goldsmiths College, London; Jan Van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht and Cooper Union, New York.
Faust was born in New Rochelle, New York. He attended university, as well as art school, in New York, California, and Chicago, and resides on Mulberry Street in Little Italy, New York.