M.A.D. NEWSLETTER - October 2012

Dear Friends,

I have been observing an interesting phenomenon recently, and it goes something like this: a man in his early forties enters the MB&F M.A.D. Gallery, stops in front of a large photograph of a robot on an icy plain and exclaims to his wife: “WOW! This brings back fantastic memories, it’s beautiful!”

This man, like many others at the M.A.D. Gallery, has been brought back to his childhood thanks to renowned Swiss photographer Marc Ninghetto who has put television icons of the 35-plus generation at the heart of a new series of photographs he calls “The Solitude of a Machine”.

The ‘Machines’ being referred to are none other than the Japanese manga robots Grendizer and Astroboy, respectively known as ‘Goldorak’ and ‘Astro, le petit robot’ in French. Marc uses a technique called “digital sampling” which, in this case, involved photographing 3-D robot models and then blending these shots with those from his personal databank of images. The result is a stunning series of eight photographs in which Grendizer finds itself towering over big-city skyscrapers or skulking in the shadows of a small-town gas station, while Astroboy blasts off from Cape Canaveral.

Although a big fan of Grendizer and Astroboy, in 15 years and as many exhibitions, Marc had never had the opportunity to create an exhibition inspired by his childhood… until I asked him to create something especially for the Gallery. He had a very clear idea of what he wanted and that meant breaking from his traditional style of shooting female silhouettes. That said, robots are, in a sense, the consummate expression of the human machine.

There is also a neat parallel between Marc’s use of Grendizer in his series of photos and one of the inspirations behind MB&F: I grew up spending hours with Grendizer action figures in my room, beating the bad guys with his iconic battle-axe. As you may know, motifs of the rotor (as seen here above) and the buckle of MB&F timepieces take their cues from the shape of this legendary weapon, known in French as the asteroache. Needless to say, I enthusiastically gave Marc the go-ahead when he proposed Grendizer as one of the subjects of his exhibition.

For Marc, Grendizer is the perfect robot in terms of conception, storyline and its role as a superhero. He wanted to play with the ambiguity of the exhibition title “The Solitude of a Machine” as his characters are not so much sad as a bit lost in their surroundings. In fact, Marc cleverly manages to imbue these usually super powerful robots with a sense of otherness and estrangement on finding themselves in our real-life terrestrial environment, with them wondering what the heck are they doing here.

So I urge you to come to the M.A.D. Gallery and join us on our nostalgia trip – and allow yourself to be brought back to your childhood by marvelling at one of Marc’s eight photographs in a limited edition of 25 prints.

With my very best regards,