Broken Screens

In this series, Various & Gould transfer the concept of their “Broken Windows” series (2015) to smart phone devices. A broken screen usually implicates an annoying, often disastrous situation for those involved. It reveals both our dependence on cell phones and the fragility of these devices that we carry with us 24/7. Likewise, a visual beauty lies in the individual nature of the breakage. The cracks and splinters, whose origin has its own story. The duo takes up these thoughts with the aim of demonstrating the beauty of these fragments and capturing the resulting image of dysfunction.

With an etching press the artists Various & Gould produce a print of the removed screen. The results are portraits of tragic human-and-technology relationships.

The fascination of these works may be based on completely different feelings and associations: The immediacy of the printing process, the own consternation or the comforting thrill, to have been spared from it so far, the appearance of the cracks reminding of landscapes or abstract pictures, or the possibility of a therapeutic “digital detox” that is within one’s reach.