For her new series “Hyper Reality” Olga Kisseleva has photographed food items stolen by consumers in a supermarket and reconstructed them as still lives. Each photo allows one to paint a portrait.
Olga Kisseleva’s historical references are situated in the realm of still lifes, whose intertextual process she adopts by working out a catalogue of twenty-first-century visual allegories. Kisseleva’s Divers Faits (Varied facts) constitutes a contemporary dictionary of the symbolics of food and of the objects of everyday life, as well as of its ideological codifications. The title of her new series, Interpellations (Taken in for questioning), refers to a supermarket’s “back room for questioning” where people caught in flagrante delicto for theft are interrogated. This also is also the place where the artist shoots her pictures. The way the objects are displayed is reminiscent of a Flemish still life. Nonetheless, the visibility of the display contrasts with the secret gesture of the thief to which these objects stolen from the shelves serve as testimony. Via these objects, the artist analyzes an impulsive logic, one that uncovers some sometimes unavowed desires, as opposed to a shopping list, which is tied to needs.