Thy Neighbour 2001

An article featuring in a magazine for ‘gun-lovers’ instructing readers “how to fire” accompanied by a set of 6 explicitly illustrated photos of an ordinary looking guy firing his gun, from his back-lawn ignited Meimaroglou’s interest. Once again, D. Meimaroglou plays on the ambiguity of the real and its representation. In Thy Neighbour, the life-size images of that man holding a gun pointing at the viewer with the colour palette gradually escalating from the peaceful meadow-green background shown in the first image to bloody-red in the final phase, create an entire installation. Here too the ambiguity is prevalent. Is the man shooting the gun out at us as an act of violence? Is the image supposed to shock us into reality and in this sense, is it directly political? Or is it a parody of reality’s reproduction in images that operate as pure sensation?