David Krovblit is a Toronto based photographer whose work is based on his interaction with the world and represents his response to it.
Collage is one of the unique methods of representations taken by many over the years. David Krovblit has taken this technique as a means of expressing his views on everyday life in a set of works he himself calls collage. However, we must make a distinction between collage as a technique in general, and collage as a technique used in Krovblit’s work. Generally speaking, collage incorporates the use of various materials such as cloth, paper, wood, etc.
But in Krovblit’s work, various pictures have been juxtaposed with one another in order to render the artist’s vision and his response to everyday life. In this intriguing, engaging, and thought-provoking collection of works, one can observe a coming together of the values set up and advertised by the media in a way that highlights their inherent absurdity. The faces and images one can find everywhere, on magazine covers as well as ads or movies, have been manipulated by Krovblit in a way that allows a different perspective at images that are otherwise passed as normal.
It is not very easy to make a judgment as to what the artist wants to show, as so many things have been placed next to one another each pointing a different direction. Perhaps, that is the reality of the modern life; perhaps there is so much to do and so many things one can be or is advised to be in the contemporary world, that is hard to tell who’s who.
The undertone of his Collages in making social commentaries resonate in his other sets of works called Epic, Lovin It, Hamburger-Head, and Eat Fast Die Young. Krovblit’s Grenades are images that combine history and beauty, reconstructing means of destruction. The Faberge Grenades imitate the design of Faberge eggs which were created by Carl Faberge, a Russian jeweler.
After the strike of World War One, the Faberge factory was turned into a munition factory, manufacturing grenades that contributed to the destruction of the war. The Bone China Grenades takes the audience back to earlier times, World War Two. This was the time when the industrial infrastructure of Japan was weakened because of the war and blockades, making the country unable to produce the classical grenades.
That is why the Japanese started creating ceramic grenades that did not have any pins. The Exploit Grenades points to the munition factories that are much bigger enterprises than the two mentioned ones and have grown over the years. The theme of destruction is repeated in his collection of photos called Vise, which is still photos captured of the process of being smashed.
All images, courtesy of artist: David Krovblit
