Antony Cairns is presented by Simon Baker, director of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, which recently exhibited and acquired one of his video works.

For OFFSCREEN, Antony Cairns presents works from the Computer Punch Card series. Using vintage IBM cards, originally used to create computer programs, Antony Cairns constructs large-scale puzzle-like compositions that reveal an image from this archive of abstract photography.

Antony Cairns (b. 1980, lives and works in London) takes photos and videos at night, using the available light emitted by buildings in urban centers such as London, Tokyo and Los Angeles. His work is resolutely non-topographic, in the conventional sense that photography has been used to record spaces, structures and architectural styles. architectural styles. However, Cairns’ work is not limited to his distinctive approach to imaging the urban environment. It is a practice that accepts and embraces the photographic medium in its sophisticated entirety: from the effect of using light on analog film, through a range of experimental darkroom processes, to an innovative and highly specialized understanding of the first digital media available to the photographic image in the 21st century. Cairns has exhibited and published widely, in Europe, the USA and Japan. His work is held in art collections including the V&A Museum, London, MEP, Paris and the George Eastman Museum, New York.

OFFTRACKS is a program designed by OFFSCREEN to provide a sales platform for artists supported by renowned curators and institutions.

“Antony Cairns was exhibited as part of the MEP’s Studio programme in November 2022. He produced a complex and ambitious video installation using outmoded monitors to present his film PXL CTY. The MEP’s Cercle des Collectionneurs subsequently acquired the work in its entirety for the MEP collection. Cairns’s work is subtle and layered, meditating, through both still and moving images, on the relationship between technology and the urban landscape.”

Simon Baker, Director, MEP