Bio­gra­phy

In 2010 trai­ned archi­tect Tadao Cern (born 1983) from Vil­nius, Lithua­nia chose to turn his pas­sion for artistic pho­to­gra­phy into his pro­fes­sion. He first found inter­na­tio­nal acclaim in 2012 with his series “Blow Job” whose sit­ters’ facial fea­tures are bizar­rely dis­tor­ted through the use of a force­ful air cur­rent. His sub­se­quent pro­ject, “Revea­ling the Truth” con­sists of a digi­tal revi­sion of two icons from art history: While Leo­nardo di Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” lea­ves its ori­gi­nal frame and pres­ents its­elf to the viewer in an unfa­mi­liar mate­ria­lity, Vin­cent van Gogh, as seen in his self-portrait from 1889 that hangs in Paris’ Musée d’Orsay, con­fronts the viewer as a real, live human being with a pier­cing stare. The irre­sis­ti­ble effect of this digi­tal reconstruc­tion attrac­ted the atten­tion of major insti­tu­ti­ons such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Van Gogh Museum in Ams­ter­dam, and the Saatchi Gal­lery in Lon­don.
Howe­ver, this posi­tive response was sur­pas­sed by the glo­bal suc­cess of “Com­fort Zone” crea­ted in 2013. With this series, the Lithua­nian pho­to­gra­pher Tadao Cern (born 1983) has docu­men­ted the beach as a place where the pre­vai­ling con­cept of beauty and the other­wise fier­cely guar­ded sense of pri­vacy are both irre­le­vant. In con­trast to other realms of public space, which are sub­ject to inces­sant social con­trols, it seems all of these fac­tors and norms are thrown out when one is at the beach. Dozing sun­ba­thers, initi­ally pho­to­gra­phed wit­hout their know­ledge, have con­struc­ted a her­me­tic micro­cosm atop their color­ful beach towels that makes their phy­si­cal pre­sence unas­sail­able. The range of beach­wear fashions and the selec­ted access­ories, the con­tor­ti­ons of the slee­pers’ bodies, as well as the dif­fe­ren­ces of their phy­si­cal appearan­ces come toge­ther as still-life arran­ge­ments cau­sing an aes­the­tic ele­va­tion of the beach and its tem­porary inha­bi­tants. The mundane and the uni­que, the ordi­nary and the art­ful, the sub­lime and the (unin­ten­tio­nally) comi­cal melt into a fasci­na­ting dia­gram of human life­styles and variety.
In addi­tion to his pho­to­gra­phy, Tadao Cern devo­tes him­self to expe­ri­men­tal tech­ni­ques in pain­ting (the series “Chro­ma­tic Aber­ra­tion”) and all-encompassing instal­la­ti­ons (“Black Balloons”).

Cur­ri­cu­lum Vitae

Port­fo­lio