Libido and Mortido, Portrait #47, 2017 – Print by George Mayer

Artist: George Mayer
Year: 2017
Materials: Printed on Hahnemühle Paper
Edition: 2/6
Dimensions: 90 x 60 cm
Location: Sydney
Other info: Delivered flat-packed

About the artwork:

In 2017, the famous Libido & Mortido photography series received the first ever grant for photo projects from Sony and World Photography Organization. In April 2018, the presentation of the photography series was held at Somerset House in London, where it received numerous positive reviews from journalists and critics.

Some portraits from the series were exhibited in Paris as part of the Paris Photo OFF 2018 and in Arles as part of the Voies Off Festival 2018. The solo exhibitions were successfully held in Kyiv at Chicago Central House as part of the Photo Kyiv Fair 2018 and in Moscow at VS Unio Gallery. Famous show business stars, stage directors, artists, architects and producers visited the exhibition opening in Moscow, among them – singer Valeriya and producer Iosif Prigozhin. The photos were acquired by Viktor Shkulev, the founder of Hearst Shkulev Media, Andrey Malakhov, the most famous TV presenter in Russia, and other persons for private collections.

Some of the project photos were published in European magazines for professional photographers. Also, portraits from the series have won some competitions, including the International Photography Awards held annually at Carnegie Hall, New York.

No post-processing and editing were used when creating this photo project. All lighting effects were created in a photo studio using special optical devices. The video of the project shooting can be seen on the YouTube channel and the official website, georgemayerstudio.com. The Technique is unique, and Gobo masks for projection light attachments are hand-made for each portrait.

Critics note a pronounced author’s style, which resembles the experiments of such classics as Man Ray, Erwin Blumenfeld and Frantisek Drtikol, but has its own unique character and includes many innovative solutions.

The run of portrait photographs is only 6 prints and is sold with a certificate of authenticity from the author, which indicates the unique serial number of the print.

The prints are made in a professional photo lab on photo paper under the author’s control. Each print contains the name, date, number from the print run and the author’s autograph.

The series includes 68 portraits. In 2021, it is planned to release a book dedicated to the project.

You may see photos from the exhibitions in the images attached to the lot.

Libido and Mortido are the two powers that accompany us through life since our birth. Libido is an aspiration for creativity and art or the desire to live. But everything that moves is restricted and cannot be endless. Mortido is the power restricting libido, it is an aspiration for death or aspiration for endless life out of the bounds of the body. Throughout life one suffers these powers fighting. The inward mortido destroys the libido, so it is destructive and self-destructive.

Sabina Spielrein speaks of aspiration for death as the primitive instinct of human being. Nevertheless, we cannot regard libido and mortido as fighting antitheses. They are more like dialectical opposites interpenetrating each other. The individual senses the interaction of these two powers and being influenced by their interaction tries to find some balance inside to preserve oneself. And while the inward mortido causes destructive changes of the personality, that is the process of destroying the personality, the libido directed to the self-leads to the cognition of one’s true self.

On the photographs, the nude figure of a woman is used as a symbol, as a reflection of the human consciousness being at the boundary of the two concepts of creation and destruction. It is a woman’s figure that is depicted because it is associated with the concept of the Anima introduced by the psychologist Jung. It implies the feminine archetype that is the influence of emotions, moods, and inwardness. The masculine archetype, the Animus, is characterized by outwardness and tough overriding decisions.

In the techniques, we use the experience of great experimentalists like František Drtikol, Erwin Blumenfeld, and Victor Skrebneski. By using contrasting light and shadows, we show the two antitheses coexisting in human consciousness. The fighting of these two antitheses is shown through optical deflections.