Nir Segal | Untitled
For the past seven years, during which he has studied in London, Nir Segal (born 1980) has made his way by tube to the Slade School of Fine Art and back almost daily. En route, he has passed each day by the tabloid dispensers distributing thin, disreputable, sensationalist newspapers free of charge. These tabloids abound with ads, gossip, astounding revelations, and celebrity photos. In time, Segal collected a large number of copies, a tangible reflection of the passage of time.
Segal’s installation includes display racks holding newspaper sheets alongside compositions of folded issues presented like mass-distributed commodities. Seductive, flickering images are conjoined to create a frantic collage. This technique has long become iconic in the history of modern art, where it was seen as a reflection of the urban hectic urgency within which it was born.[1] Already in the 1970s, Brian O’Doherty identified the capacity of collage to render present an informational overload, surplus information which provokes indifference and alienation.[2] In the Virtual Age, the flickering sequence of passing images has taken forms such as Instagram, Tumblr, and Facebook.
