Based in Doha, Qatar, and Copenhagen, Denmark, Christto & Andrew began collaborating in 2012, using a surreal style to portray the effects of structural systems like history, politics, and the economy, as well as popular culture at large. Working primarily in photography in addition to mediums like film and installation, the duo has achieved international recognition of their singular point of view and contemporary aesthetics.
In A Message from Venus, the duo’s first U.S. museum exhibition, the artists present recent photographs that speak to our globalized culture at a time when our relationships to and experiences of image-making technology are dissimilar. The artists’ photographs proffer objects loaded with symbolism and figures that paradoxically seem to inhabit a place neither past nor future that could exist within various cultural systems. In a series of scenes, the artists compose these organic and technological objects in the manner typical of the “still nature” genre of art history — yet a more enigmatic aura prevails. While employing a visual vocabulary that condenses and references the past 60 years of popular culture and image production, Christto & Andrew create their own mythology.