Jon Gorospe

Polished Cities dissects various contemporary architectural buildings photographed by Jon Gorospe in cities around the world, including Berlin, Milan, New York, Oslo, and Singapore. The installation is composed of black and white photographs of pristine buildings following a precise geometrical order, some of which are intervened by sheets of red acrylic, a color which guides the frenetic rhythm of metropolitan life. The dialogue created by these superimposed images and contrasting colors decontextualize the buildings from their urban environments. Inspired by the South Korean and German philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s Saving Beauty (2015), who discusses the concept of beauty in today’s consumer culture, Gorospe reinterprets a dystopian society through crisp images of modular, reticular, and symmetrical structures in a contemporary city.