Eva & Franco Mattes

Panorama Cat, 01.08.2022

The popularity of cats in internet pop culture has culminated in the manifestation of the meme subgenre LOLcat. In response to this phenomenon, Eva & Franco Mattes have created taxidermic sculptures such as Half Cat (2020) or Ceiling Cat (2016) which in their absurdity are a metaphor for the ever-circulating, interconnected and often manipulated image that has gone viral. By playing with the sensation and peculiarity of the popular meme subject, bringing it into real space, the cat is removed from its context. The artist duo Eva & Franco Mattes have focused their work around networked imagery since the mid 90s. Through their practice, the artists challenge the audience to consider their role as recipients and contributors of online content whilst holding up a mirror to behavioural patterns of a networked society. For this month’s edition of the HEK Net Works series and in continuation of the cat epos, Eva & Franco Mattes present a social media-based version of the LOLcat meme.

Artists' statement:

Panorama Cat is a sculpture Based on the “panorama fails” internet phenomenon. Panoramic photography is a technique of photography, using specialized software, that captures images with horizontally elongated fields of view. Creating panoramas used to be a lot of hard work and only tech-savvy photographers knew how to do it, manually stitching photos on the computer. Things have changed in recent years with the introduction of the panorama photo feature in phones, which allows everyone to take a panorama photo, since 'the phone can do it all for you.' With the popularization of the feature, came a flood of mistakes: 'Panorama fails that are so bad they're good.'

Eva & Franco Mattes (IT) are an artist duo based in New York. They are considered amongst the pioneers of web based art. Their work spans from videos to installations and websites. Oftentimes with a humorous touch, Eva & Franco Mattes’ work concerns itself with the social, ethical and political impact of the networked condition on society. They have internationally exhibited and are represented in the collections of the SFMOMA (San Francisco), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Fotomuseum Winterthur, X Museum (Karlsruhe) and the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis).