Christian Saldert (1977)
Lives and works in Stockholm and Prague

With his paintings, videos and clothes (under the label Fienden), Christian reveals his debt to surrealism at the same time situating his work in a contemporary philosophical tradition, combining politics and psychoanalysis. One theme that runs as a leitmotif throughout his work is how the “real thing” never corresponds to the authenticity it promises.But this is not to be confused with a postmodern stance where the authentic and the copy are fused, disintegrated into one another. Instead, to Saldert the authentic always reappears, not in an uncontaminated pure form, but through a “parallax gap” that the copy renders possible. In this sense authenticity is never an object independent from the copy, but rather the blindspot that dislocates a political, sexual or religious identity. This becomes evident in his recent work, where the polymorphous identities of nuns – sexual, religious and political – are at the same time impossible to fully realize and, precisely because they are unrealisable, truly authentic.

http://www.fienden.se

Video : 3.04 min