Darzacq & Lüneman, Haser, Paumier, Wechsler, Yokonami /
PULSE Miami

For PULSE Miami Beach 2016, De Soto Gallery presented works by Denis Darzacq & Anna Lüneman, Alma Haser, Brian Paumier, Sadie Wechsler, and Osamu Yokonami. All of the artists shared an interest in conceptions of reality, identity, memory, temporality, and possible futures. Denis Darzacq, Anna Lüneman, and Brian Paumier were in attendance at the fair.

Denis Darzacq’s project Doublemix In Situ, a collaboration with Anna Lüneman, melds photography with ceramics. Lüneman’s sculptural abstractions are embedded directly into Darzacq’s laser-cut photographs. Pitting the pixel against the tactile, the composites occupy a strange and poetic interstice that makes palpable the surrealism of life in the digital age.

Alma Haser’s Cosmic Surgery series of 2D and 3D portraits and free-standing sculptures combines photography with collage and origami, connecting image and identity in a culture of visual abundance. She suggests a fundamental shift in the way we understand ourselves and the world around us, picturing the possibility of a trans-humanist future.

Brian Paumier explored the mechanics of memory and nostalgia through prints and light boxes that mix photography with reworked 1980s video game graphics and custom motorcycle fabrications. Borrowing from disparate influences, he weaves a deeply personal but universal narrative while incorporating nontraditional materials that veer toward an image-object.

Sadie Wechsler’s quirky fabrications rescript reality like a déjà vu, mining sci-fi and B-movie tropes from collective imagination. Using various approaches—straight photography, digital and physical compositing, and layered 3D dioramas—she renders far-flung locales and tourist destinations equally extreme and otherworldly.

Through rhythmic repetition and seriality, Osamu Yokonami contemplates socialization and cultural homogeneity, highlighting our interconnectedness with nature and each other. He explores dualistic conceptions of selfhood and the fine line between innocence and vice.

Denis Darzacq (b. 1961, Paris, France) has exhibited extensively throughout Europe and internationally. He received a World Press Photo Award in 2007 and the Niépce Prize in 2012. His work is in numerous public and private collections including Centre Pompidou, Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Bidwell Projects, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

Anna Iris Lüneman (b. 1960, Paris, France) works across media and disciplines. She has participated in collaborative projects with the collective Encore, exhibiting at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris and PS1 in New York, and has art directed with Elein Fleiss and Christophe Brunnquell at *Purple*, the renowned art and culture quarterly.

Alma Haser (b. 1990, Black Forest, Germany) received a BA(Hons) in Photography in Art Practice from Nottingham Trent University. She won the Magenta Foundation’s Bright Spark Award for *Cosmic Surgery* in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery for an earlier series, *The Ventriloquist*, in 2012. She has exhibited at The Photographer’s Gallery in London and at UNSEEN in Amsterdam.

Brian Paumier (b. 1973, Oxnard, California) received his MFA from ICP/Bard and his BFA from Art Center College of Design. His work is held in public and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the 21c Museum Hotel in Durham, NC, and the Beth Rudin DeWoody collection.