distURBANces – Can Fiction Beat Reality?

Thibault Brunet

In the framework of the European project distURBANces, the Month of Photography presents works by the French artist Thibault Brunet in the Computerspielemuseum (Computer Game Museum) Berlin. Brunet deals with the topic of reality and the imitation of reality by means of antagonistic photographic practices that oscillate in the purely digital sphere between reportage, painting, film stills and fine art. In series Vice City (2007 – 2012), he is an avatar taking ‘real’ photographs with a virtual camera of ‘surreal’ details and solitary architectures in vast landscapes in the virtual worlds of the computer game Grand Theft Auto (GTA). Brunet’s images thus become a contra position: first of all aesthetically, because the photographs consist of an extreme contrast to the otherwise forceful visual system of the game made up of tower blocks, cars and gangsters, on the other ideally, because he takes on the role of an art photographer, not a gangster. In the temporary exhibition space of the Computerspielemuseum, Brunet’s Vice City thus appears in a close, yet nonetheless remote context.