17 May 2018

Simon Roberts: Public Performance

Zeitgeist Gallery

Reviewed by Audrey Molloy

"Simon Roberts: Public Performance" is an exhibition of large-format tableaux from the photographer's recent body of work Sight Sacralization: (Re)framing Switzerland (all 2016). Underscoring the public theatrics of culturally romanticized scenic vistas, Roberts frames popular tourist viewing platforms within grand Swiss landscapes - a managed point of view which simultaneously implicates the viewer and photographed spectators in a performance of looking.

As in Gornergrat, Zermatt, Switzerland, Roberts's scenic photographs retain an all-over sharpness and limited depth of field that effectively flattens the image plane. The dense congregation of humans constrained to the designated viewing arena in Mount Pilatus, Lucerne, Switzerland suggests an experience of natural wonder that is as mechanical and collective as the means by which it is memorialized. His is a cinematic hyper-realism which quietly points to the absurd.