Tarik Hayward. Neutral Density
Prix du Jury d’Accrochage [Vaud 2016]

Winner of the Accrochage [Vaud 2016] jury prize, Tarik Hayward has taken over a room in the museum for his exhibition “Neutral Density”, in which he pursues his exploration of materials produced by modernity.

While Hayward frequently has recourse to the natural – clay, wood, stone – which he then transforms in various ways, he sometimes makes direct use of waste produced by human activity. In a mingling of DIY and scavenging, of ruin and restoration, of “alternative” thinking and dystopianism, Hayward creates works redolent of Minimalist sculpture and performance and at the same time, in terms of their materials, of Arte Povera and vernacular architecture.

For this exhibition he has come up with a series of sculptures using two sheets of glass with, between them, used oil from restaurants, fast food outlets, workshops and garages in and around Lausanne. Thus waste oil, initially essential to the functioning of the industrial civilisation that ultimately junks it, is taken out of circulation and turned into pictures, mirrors, vitrines and aquariums, in a kind of little natural history museum for our time.