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Diego Grandry (1992) uses the visual language of video games, sports and other popular culture to reflect on social and political themes. He not only hacks existing games like The Sims or Grand Theft Auto, but also creates extremely detailed digital images of his own. The latter also applies to his triptych shown at Prospects.
For Beauf et Barbare (2024) Grandry was inspired by an iconic press photograph in which political leaders Leonid Brezhnev (Soviet Union) and Erich Honecker (GDR) are giving each other the socialist fraternal kiss. The artist drew a white man and a Black man: a beauf (French for redneck) and a barbarian. While in politics these two groups are often played off against each other, Grandry believes that the political future, at least that of the left-wing, lies in uniting them.
The third part of Frères et Sœurs (2024) also references a political moment: the formation of the Nouveau Front Populaire, an alliance of left-wing political parties who snatched the win from the extreme right during the 2024 French elections. The man in the image wears the alliance’s name on his football shirt and appears to support it. But is the little devil on his shoulder whispering something else to him? The third part of the triptych explores techno-feudalism: the idea that large tech companies such as Google and Meta own digital land’ (like social media platforms) that people may use in exchange for a part of the yield (likes, attention). All characters in the triptych are covered in logos. Grandry not only uses them to add layers of meaning to the image, but also to comment on how commercial companies are dominating our visual cultural.
Text: Sarah van Binsbergen
Translated from Dutch by Marie Louise Schoondergang (The Art of Translation)