Mounting Rene Matić’s snapshots in Perspex isn’t actually sufficient to make them fascinating | The Photographers’ Gallery

At 29, Rene Matić is the youngest ever particular person to win the £30,000 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize. They have been nominated for his or her solo exhibition As Opposed to the Truth at CCA Berlin – there’s at present a much smaller reconfiguration representing part of the show on the Photographers’ Gallery in London. Matić was additionally the youngest artist ever to be nominated for the Turner prize final 12 months.

There are issues I like about Matić. I like the best way they problem what counts in life and artwork, and what counts as British. Their 2022 work, Upon This Rock (proven in Berlin although not within the present show in London) – a photographic set up and a movie exploring the artist’s father, Paul, and his involvement with the skinhead motion – felt prefer it was breaking new floor, conceptually and materially. Matić’s craving to grasp masculinity and fatherhood as forces shaping nationwide id, and the best way they incorporate new tales into the folds of Britain’s historic material, felt authentic and thrilling.

Yet numerous Matić’s different work doesn’t really feel mature sufficient for the photographer to have taken the prize so early of their profession. The set up Feelings Wheel, a collection of diaristic snapshots which is proven on the Photographers’ Gallery, seems like one thing you’d paste in your wall or Tumblr at college. They are fairly mediocre photos, secure from Instagram censorship, and arranging them in Perspex doesn’t make them extra fascinating. I discover there’s an annoying insularity, a way of preaching to the transformed, whereas the simplest artwork builds bridges between artist and viewer, permitting individuals who aren’t a part of the gang to grasp it and be moved by it, too.

Too typically, Matić’s pictures are solely made fascinating by the other ways they show them in assemblages, spatial and sculptural configurations. Their work attracts comparisons with Wolfgang Tillmans or Nan Goldin, who each photographed their very own subcultures and communities, however with extra edge and verve. With slideshows to music (within the case of Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency) and multi-format installations responding to the area (Tillmans), each photographers forged apart the standard concentrate on a single picture, creating new methods of a number of pictures that Matić adapts however doesn’t fairly transfer ahead.

There’s nothing fallacious with artwork that focuses on id – particularly identities which were persistently erased and ignored on this nation. The truth a queer, working-class particular person of color received this award is nice as a press release for what the Deutsche Börse prize can stand for. But primarily based on what Matić has executed for images, I don’t assume they need to have received.

Autobiography can’t be the one factor a piece has to supply. I’m not positive what’s actually radical or nuanced about Matić’s pictures of flags and tattoos, or individuals kissing at Glastonbury. At instances, the vulnerability and compassion appears performative somewhat than honest, and there’s not sufficient rigidity – questions within the work for the viewer to resolve. Leaving the exhibition, I felt flat – although there are concepts, they want extra time to percolate. What this win appears to inform us about images now could be that the way you market your self is probably extra vital than the work you make.