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  • Miriam Backstrom

    Miriam Backstrom

  • Max Dean

    Max Dean

  • Bettinavon Zwehl

    Bettinavon Zwehl


Unlimited ID


(Miriam Bäckström, Max Dean, Jonathan Gitelson, Bettina von Zwehl, Jun Yang)


Opening on Thursday, February 23 at 5 p.m.
The exhibition runs from February 23 to April 8, 2006
The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from noon to 5 p.m.

April 29 to May 26, 2006 at Neutral ground

Unlimited ID is an exhibition of works curated for their ability to re-conceptualize photographic processes and their capacity to re-work the representational portrait as a strategy for other aesthetic means. The works in the exhibition are about relocating the practice of photography beyond the expectations of traditional practice that exist within the context of art and identity, towards a utopian relationship with technology or as a strategy for representing the individual. Rather than regard portraiture as capturing a fixed moment in time as representative of identity, Unlimited ID sets out to produce a more intangible recollection of personal reality and space. These works create opportunities for viewing subjects in multiple epistemological vantage points in a single and highly discursive context, a non-unified and wildly subjective field which, when combined, constitute an interrogation of the conventional field of photography.

The artists are seeking new conceptual possibilities for the portrait in our media and image saturated landscape using the image as a means of interrupting a coherent or continuous field and offering us in its place, the potential of merging reality with fiction and creating new venues for fictionalized or reconstructed reality.

Works in this exhibition deny the viewer an opportunity to classify, rationalize or collect; and instead, the open-ended, unbound nature of the word unlimited, not subject to qualification, points to an ambiguous, infinite, and existential quality inherent in human nature, made plausible through the constructs of identity and interpersonal interaction. The exhibition addresses the transient or mutable nature of identity present in the way the artists play with the ideas of evidence, proof, and personality through the image.

Miriam Bäckström’s Rebecka, presents the invention of truth in a video interview with Swedish actress Rebecka Hemse as a biographical interface and experimental documentary where the performer deliberately undermines the notion of identity by shifting perspective and offering multiple personalities as a unified self. Max Dean’s work introduces a process that rejects the possibility of capturing a stable image through the interaction between the viewer and his/her instantaneous reflection; whereas in Jonathan Gitelson’s work, an ideal personality type has been imagined and then staged in an image that renders the process absurd. Jun Yang’s video piece subverts the portrait by using only written text along with the artist’s voice to highlight the lengths at which language can reshape, if not mutate, one’s identity. Rather than aiming to capture the subject’s essence, Bettina von Zwehl’s work is about witnessing the impact of a system; in this case, a process in which the artist imposes the same strenuous activity on each of her subjects.

Each artwork leads back to the creation of a new framework for critically regarding the practice of photography through one of its most significant conventions: portraiture. Looking at the image when all forms of objective knowledge have been tampered with or removed, can result in a suspension of cultural knowledge or belief leading to new paradigms for understanding the world.

See Jonathan Gitelson’s web project here.


Miriam Bäckström, born in 1967, is an artist living and working in Stockholm, Sweden. She has both a bachelor’s degree in Art History from the University of Stockholm and in Photography from The Academy of Photography, Konstfack. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at IASPIS (Stockholm) and the Museum für Gegenwartskunst (Basel). She also represented Sweden in the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2005). She is represented by Nils Staerk Contemporary Art (Copenhagen) and Elba Benitez Galeria (Madrid).

Born in Leeds, England (1949), Max Dean is living and working in Toronto. He received a bachelor’s degree in Art History from the University of British Columbia in 1971. His work has been presented in solo exhibitions at international venues such as the Canadian Cultural Centre (Paris), ICC (Tokyo), Kiasma (Helsinki), and ZMK (Karlsruhe, Germany). In 2005, Dean received the prestigious Gershon Iskowitz Award. He is represented by Susan Hobbs Gallery (Toronto).

Born in New York (1975), Jonathan Gitelson is a Chicago-based artist. He holds a bachelor of Arts in Literature and Photography from the Marlboro College in Vermont and completed an MFA at Columbia College Chicago in 2004. He has exhibited at Peter Miller Gallery (Chicago), San Diego Art Institute, Minnesota Center for the Arts (Minneapolis) and the Center on Contemporary Art (Seattle).

Bettina von Zwehl, born in Germany (1971), now resides in London, England where she completed both a bachelor’s degree from London College of Printing and an MFA in Photography from Royal College of Art. Her work has been presented at The Photographer’s Gallery (London), Lombard-Freid Fine Arts (New York), Victoria Miro Gallery (London), and Galleria Laura Pecci (Milan).

Jun Yang, originally from China (1975) immigrated to Vienna, Austria in 1979, where he continues to reside today. He has studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Akademie in Amsterdam, and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna. Yang has exhibited internationally at Index (Stockholm), MAC (Marseille), MAK (Vienna), Galerie fuer Zeitgenoessiche Kunst Leipzig (Germany). He participated in the 2005 Venice Biennale in the context of the exhibition presented at the Italian Pavilion. He is represented by Galerie Martin Janda – Raum Aktueller Kunst in Vienna.

Dazibao thanks the artists for their generous collaboration and its members for their support.




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