PAM - Pierre-Alain Münger - Artistic Vision: Car Crash Series

Driving Force. An evocative phrase that in its ambiguous meaning captures the essence of Pierre- Alain Münger‘s artistic practice in both physical as well as conceptual terms. Working under the acronym PAM, the fitting epithet points to the very philosophy that sits at the heart of a creative vision where the sheer impact of force acts as the motor for the genesis of alluring works charged with latent potential. The pictures and objects he conceives straddle categories from painting to sculpture, while questioning traditional modes of working in favour of a modus operandi that seems counterintuitive at first glance: Creation through destruction.

For his FACE series, PAM embraces a new form of image-making, harnessing the consequences of collision to render cinematic imprints of a controlled accident. Frontal car crashes translate into portraits of vehicles in a performance that is both shocking and mesmerising. The artist‘s hand is thereby eliminated, as PAM executes his ‘paintings‘ by steering discarded cars against a wall. By virtue of unrestrained impact, images are driven into metal plates, as the force of confrontation is harnessed to create something of visual ‘impact‘. The resulting ‘car faces‘ appear aquatic in nature, as if photographs taken underwater in an attempt at seizing the submerged object, distorted by the force of nature. An alleged paradox, the beauty of collosion is thus lent new shape and form, speaking the language of anti-creation as images emerge from the flat support of an inanimate canvas.

The pictures PAM orchestrates are snapshots severed from an eternal stream of images and etched onto the unrelenting support of his metal canvases. In a nod to a photographic practice, positive and negative are conjoined, incised into the flat screen of a ductile surface which in his case has become a more durable screen. Playing with the incessant flow of being and becoming, PAM thereby captures the very last moment - a single instant of inconceivable force - before the standstill. Time is frozen into the image, the collision eternalised - immobilised against the continuing course of history. Yet, in an imaginary twist, the picture picks up speed again, as motion is translated into a visual imprint of a simulacrum that seems to hover on the support. Trapped for a second, only to then resume its intractable itinerary again.

In its strange allure, the image comes to stand diametrically opposed to the smashing process of creation. The fatal collision - the last ride - turns into the point of departure for a transformation of physical force to allow for something new to assume shape. Fluid images whose malleability bears the imprint and echo of their genesis. Visual in their effect, the pictures from the FACE series thereby vibrate with the repercussions of their making, a translation of sonic fields into imaginary sound installations that only gradually fade out.

Of hypnotic appeal, PAM‘s works engage the eyes that move restlessly across the picture plane, tracing the indentations on the surface of the metal. Rather than flat images, PAM‘s creations unfold as reliefs, strung between the light and dark areas on the sturdy canvas.
Born from the violence of a car crash, they spark a range of associations acting as a latent reminder of the fragility of life, mirrored against the fascination of its perfect antithesis, death. On these grounds, PAM‘s FACEs inadvertently emerge as complex and many-layered compositions that straddle the physical and the metaphysical. An invitation to look and see beyond the surface in contemplation of the forces of life.