MADRID.- The Consejería de Cultura, Deporte y Turismo opened an exhibition from the winner of the Descubrimientos PHE Epson Award in 2008. Yann Gross presents a work analysing the theme of identity through pictures of people seduced by the American way of life.

Performed in towns of the Rhone river valley, Horizonville shows people who have the feeling of belonging to a culture which they don’t really know.

The young Swiss artist Yann Gross obtained the Descubrimientos PHE Epson Award in 2008 for his series Horizonville, a work that analyses the subject of identity. This group of photographs portrays life in an industrial zone in the Swiss Rhone valley in the Valais canton.

The exhibition comprises approximately 50 photographs in which Gross portrays the inhabitants of an area close to one of Switzerland’s major tourist spots who, fascinated by the American lifestyle, have adopted its sense of aesthetics and hobbies. Without having ever visited the United States, the protagonists of Horizonville, completely seduced by this country, copy everything they have seen on television or in films, living their own American dream and developing a sense of belonging to a culture that they actually do not know.

Yann Gross (Vevey, Switzerland, 1981) studied visual communication and photography at Lausanne’s University of Art and Design. He has prepared photo essays on various subjects as well as assignments for clients such as Prism Clothing and Inout Designers. Since 2005 he has participated in group exhibitions at the Zurich Design Museum and Photokina in Cologne, and in 2008 he entered the Piece Of Cake (POC) collective. His work merited the Lucky Strike Junior Designer Award, the Vevey Grand Prix International de Photographie, the Swiss Press Photo Award and an art grant from the State of Valais, Switzerland. In 2008 he was also nominated as one of the year’s 13 Emerging Photographers by the American Photo magazine. His latest work Kitintale skates, portrays young Angolans practicing skateboard.