Avec ses fresques monumentales et ses trompe-l’œil, Lucy McKenzie offre une “archéologie critique” de la modernité
Scottish artist Lucy McKenzie has opened a major solo exhibition titled "Plastic Newspaper" at the Crac Occitanie in Sète, France. This is her first large-scale personal exhibition in the country. The show features monumental frescoes, trompe-l'œil, and immersive installations, including a full-scale fake sports shop facade created with her fashion label Atelier E.B. It represents the third stage of a cycle exploring the origins of mass media, examining 19th-century entertainment devices like panoramas and dioramas.
The exhibition offers a "critical archaeology" of modernity, questioning the boundaries between art, commerce, reality, and fiction. McKenzie uses meticulous craft to reveal the artifices of representation, particularly in her mannequins which critique standardized female forms and political iconography. By revisiting figures like Marcel Duchamp and exploring the history of display, she engages in a critical history of the gaze, examining how images shape our perception in an image-saturated world.