Mike Nelso, MAGAZIN, Buyuk Valide Han, 2003.
(Installation view, Istanbul Biennale) Image: friezeartfair.com

Mike Nelson, one of the shortlisted artists (along with Mark Wallinger, Nathan Coley and Zarina Bhimji) was previously shortlisted in 2001, is known for his hyper-real installations:

“Nelson has received his Turner prize nomination for building installations out of wood and punctuating them with junk. He creates stage sets, emotionally charged false buildings within buildings. The rooms and corridors are self-contained, with ceilings. And yet they’re not seamless. They have a raw, wooden hokeyness, a rankness, a stench of bitter memories.”

Read more HERE.

Baudrillard famously said: “The very definition of the real has become: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction…The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced: that is, the hyperreal…”

Look out for my article in the Spring issue of Border Crossings magazine on the growing trend toward hyper-reality in art.