Open Doors Gallery is delighted to present new unique artworks from Javier Hirschfeld Moreno‘s ongoing Profile series.
Javier Hirschfeld Moreno [b.1979, Málaga] is a Spanish artist and curator currently living in London. Moreno is interested in the role and responsibility of photography in the representation of the self and also collective identities.
Javier Hirschfeld Moreno’s ongoing Profile series explores the artist’s interest in art history and portraiture as well as his fascination with self-representation. By using Cartes de Visite, trading cards from the 1860’s, and a collection of screenshots amassed from contemporary dating platforms like Tinder and Grindr, Javier examines themes of identity and visibility, documentation and archive, as well as emotional and surveillance capitalism. Work from this series has been exhibited at Photo London, 2023 & Approche, Paris, 2022, this will be the first time his work has been exhibited at UNSEEN, Amsterdam.
These Cartes de Visite were the first example of socialisation mediated by photography, and the beginning of the ‘contemporary culture of ego’. Perhaps even an early form of social media themselves. By cutting into his collection of original nineteenth century cards and removing the figures from the past, Javier creates a window. Then using screenshots he has captured from dating apps like Tinder & Grindr, the artist spends time considering the perfect ‘match’ between then and now by carefully arranging the print behind the window.
Javier is fascinated by the associations & deductions the audience is then forced to make through this sophisticated language of imagery embedded in our collective subconscious. This simple and elegant idea opens up a portal through the history of photography and in the same moment creates a dialogue between society then and society now. From the beginning of modernity with all its aspirations and anxieties, to current social preoccupations around our images.
“I played with printed dating-app profiles and intervened on the cartes of young males. As a result, the landscape replaces the portrait and the digital invades the old photograph, illustrating at once the offline-to-online transition and one of its consequences, a certain loss of queer visibility.”
— Javier Hirschfeld Moreno, 2023
To see the full catalogue of work available by this artist, please reach out to: [email protected]