Harold Lechien
Glass Skin - Installation - 2024
présentée dans le cadre de l'exposition Panorama 26
Glass Skin is a video installation that explores the porous relationship between our skin and screens. Through a series of acts combining 3D animations, films and commercial image banks, the viewer is immersed in a reflection revealing the tensions and contradictions inherent in authenticity and the staging of the self, in skincare rituals and their place in our hyper-connected daily lives. There is a constant to-and-fro between reality and fiction, between the vulnerability of physical bodies and the infinite possibilities of technology. At a time when the digital image is becoming materialised like a second skin, the tangible relationships between our bodies and images are adapting to give way to an interplay of representation and influence that transcends our affects. The visual experience of this film-installation is accompanied by sculptures representing massage chairs, offering visitors the chance to immerse themselves in the images projected onto the two screens.
Glass Skin dismantles media strategies of address to confront our bodies with the digital image, overturning our expectations: the body becomes a consumable product, while products are transformed into active bodies.
Harold Lechien
Harold Lechien, born in Belgium in 1995, lives and works in Brussels.
He began his artistic training at La Cambre, where he studied Urban Space, before going on to obtain a master’s degree in the Engraving and Printed Image. His work takes a reflexive look at the circulation of emotions that arise in the production and emotional reception of images and industrial products. He has been continuing his studies at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains since September 2023.
