Sean Snyder

Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris
Through January 26

Sean Snyder’s practice focuses on transformations in the urban context and social behavior impelled by the invasion of stereotypical architectural forms—direct and concrete expressions of the triumph of consumer culture and the mass media.

The artist has always been particularly interested in commercial architecture, such as airport duty-free shops or hotel and fast-food chains, analyzing the contradictions and paradoxical effects that emerge from the encounter between standardized international models and local traditions. Particularly effective is his work on the strategies behind urban planning and on the apparent adaptation of McDonald’s to the most diverse lifestyles.

In the artist’s Paris show he has confronted an analogous topic, photographically documenting newspaper articles and two architectural models representing an extraordinary case of short circuit between two opposing ideologies: capitalism in Texas and the authoritarian communist regime of Romania under Ceausescu.

The event that inspired his work took place around the mid-’90s, when the corrupt millionaire Alexandru, a friend of the Romanian dictator, reconstructed on his property an almost exact facsimile of J.R.’s legendary ranch, the nerve center of the infinite vicissitudes of the epic television series Dallas.

At the time, the series was the only American television show transmitted on Romanian television. Although its airing was an attempt to demonstrate the corruption of capitalist civilization, it captured the local public’s imagination.

Oddly, the grotesque and spectacular ranch project—which once hosted a visit by actor Larry Hagman, who played J.R. on the series—was designed and constructed according to its television image, effecting a significant difference in the two buildings’ proportions and details.

In his models of the buildings, Snyder shows up these differences to underscore the tangible gap, apparently minimal but in fact abysmal, between the two social realities.




Francesco Poli
Translation by Amanda Coulson