Harold Lechien

Installation

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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 (1995) is a Belgian artist who lives and works in Brussels. Through modular installations combining sculpture, video, images and manufactured objects, his work questions contemporary forms of staging and the visual narratives that shape our perception of reality. By sampling, transforming and recomposing signs from industry, he explores commodity fetishism and the mechanisms by which products, advertising discourse and communication technologies capture our emotions and convert them into commodities. His works articulate a visual and narrative style that draws as much on the codes of design and commercial scenography as on those of cinema and advertising. Using fiction as a tool for critical analysis, he stages environments in which signs, objects and bodies re-enact the logic of consumption and the spectacle. Since 2018, his work has been shown in several institutions and exhibitions in Belgium and abroad, including ISELP (Brussels), Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles (Paris), DMW Gallery (Antwerp) and the TRANSMEDIALE festival (Berlin).

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