Artist Darren Sylvester’s meticulously staged, hyper-real works investigate the dichotomy between high and low culture. Sylvester’s practice combines staged photography, sculpture and installation, with each piece the result of detailed research and planning. Sylvester’s work questions the tension between authenticity and desire within high-gloss consumer culture, by incorporating pop-cultural references that are hinted to, but just out of reach. In The Doom Buggies, Sylvester builds a series of elaborate, choreographed ‘dream’ stages, which reflect and refract a state of mind rather than place or narrative. This feeling, as if being in a pop-music video, is simultaneously personable and detached, connected and disconnected, aware yet unaware. Image: Darren Sylvester, Snow Angel, 2024. Courtesy the artist and Neon Parc.