Reynir Hutber is an emerging artist based in London, whose work explores themes of social visibility, moral relativity and the everyday imposition of authority. For this solo exhibition, presented by Grand Union in collaboration with Fierce Festival, Hutber presented his award winning installation, Stay Behind the Line, alongside a series of new related works.
Stay Behind the Line is an interactive installation that takes place in a specially constructed cell-like environment. When visitors enter the space through its narrow doorway, they are confronted by a wall-mounted surveillance monitor directly in front of them. They are now looking at a live video feed of the space with their feet placed in the top third of the screen. Further down in this relayed image however, there is a disturbing anomaly: a superimposed recording of the artist’s twitching, naked body that is no longer physically present in the room. What happens next is down to the visitor…
Other works in the exhibition also explore the absence of the performer. Technology is used to infuse the space with a sense of the artist’s presence and blur the division between past and present, spectator and protagonist. Through his works, Hutber addresses issues specific to the history of performance art while simultaneously exploring the anxieties and uncertainties of living in a sophisticated era of surveillance and mediation: an age in which it is becoming increasingly difficult to verify the authenticity of an image.