Category: contemporary art

May 31, 2020

Social distancing – Week 9: “Piper in the Woods”, an online exhibition

After having visited tons of online exhibitions and VR rooms, I found one show that finally made use of the digital space acknowledging its dimensional characteristics. “Piper in the Woods” (live until 15^th June 2020) is an online group show responding to the pandemic organized by the art platform Isthisit?, curated by its founder and director Bob Bicknell-Knight.

Piper in the Woods screenshot

The exhibition presents five videos and one sound work by five artists – John Butler, Stine Deja, Emily Mulenga, Tamsin Snow and Petra Szemán. The works look at possible futures in which technology and AI impact and govern our daily lives. As Bicknell-Knight explains in the press release, the show takes its title from the 1953 short story of the same name by Philip K Dick.

Imagination_cover taken from Piper in the Woods – Wikipedia

The science-fiction plot sees an army doctor, Henry Harris, examining the strange behaviour of several soldiers who, after returning to the Earth from an expedition to asteroid Y-3, claim they have become plants. With this belief, the soldiers stopped working and passed their time in the sun, like plants, meditating about how work is unnecessary and even harmful for our well-being. The story is part of the display and can be read on the left of the screen while navigating the exhibition space.

The videos are arranged to use the space horizontally rather than vertically. Thus, the exhibition occupies a space that goes outside the borders of a standard web page. The background is white mimicking both the white cube gallery space and, as the curator explains, “the soldiers’ deviation from the norm and into the unknown forest.” The only environmental feature in the room is given by the loop of “Last Resort” (2020), a sound work by Stine Deja which accompanies the visitor’s journey by offering the acoustic ambience.

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The artists’ works tell the stories of individuals who, in a hi-tech world, spend their lives in solitude with no or little interaction with other humans. “Piper in the Woods” introduces us to a series of unappealing scenarios which, in this time, seems more likely to happen than ever before.

May 24, 2020

Social distancing – Week 8: Roaming

I spent the last week roaming the web looking for inspiration and guidance, both in life and art. I discovered and lingered in content that spoke to me about our existence. My tone might sound a bit apocalyptic. Still, all this ‘digital life’ in lockdown is shaking my foundations leaving me –and maybe you as well – with a sense of being disconnected from reality. I found some positive vibes in reading and looking at images on the internet. I read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and a 2019 interview by Andrew Goldstein with Emmanuel Perrotin. I looked at some shots on Princess Cheeto and at the posters designed for 2020Solidarity crowdfunding project.

Image taken from Waterstones.com

The Alchemist, probably the simplest yet most inspiring book I have ever read, narrates the adventures of Santiago, a young shepherd who chooses to follow his dream. The main character is a human being who, like all of us, has fears and doubts. He questions ordinary things such as animals, the world, and his dreams. Fascinatingly, there seems to be always at least one moment in the story when the reader identifies herself with the shepherd. The book unveils how Santiago finds inspiration and determination to pursue his dream after every difficulty that appears in his path. This is an inspirational fable which helps to keep the light up in this dark time.

Gallery owner Emmanuel Perrotin poses during a photo session in Paris on May 20, 2019. (Photo by JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images) – image taken from Artnet

In what seems to be the factual world, I got absorbed in the reading of an interview with the French art dealer Emmanuel Perrotin, published on Artnet last June. Did you know he began working at an art gallery at the age of 17? Surely those were different times, but I really liked that he did not become one of the most prominent art dealers in the world overnight. The gallerist talked of how, in order to slowly establish his legacy, he spent many years taking the risk to nurture and represent young artists. Perrotin led his battles with victories and failures precisely like the majority of people.

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A post shared by I am Cheeto. A cat. (@princesscheeto)

Still, in my addictive browsing activity, I found some rest from my COVID-19 anxieties on @princesscheeto, an Instagram profile and website about cats. Here a creative photographer expresses her talent by shooting her furry pets in colourful yet improbable sets. The style is of fashion photography and shows a good knowledge of editing. You can find a snooty cat, a cat-ice-cream sandwich, sailor cats, a wizard-cat and so on. Leaving a smile on my face, these joyful pictures reminded me that you can be creative even when showing your skills and talent. Thumb down to boredom and let’s cheer up with creativity and colours in this harsh time of confinement!

Anne Imhof Eliza Douglas in Anne Imhof, Imagine, Galerie Buchholz, 2019, Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski 2019 – Image taken from Between Bridges website

Differently, it was through Art Basel LinkedIn page that I read of 2020Solidarity, a funding project launched by Between Bridges foundation. The idea attracted over fifty artists who came together to design an A2-size poster each. The participant list includes Anne Imhof, Mark Leckey, Seth Price, and BB’s initiator Wolfgang Tillmans among other international names. Their creations are being offered to those cultural organisations in need of financial support which, then, will offer them as rewards for a 50€ / £50 / $50 donation. 2020Solidarity represents a small yet real way for artists to help organisations whose mission is primarily to support artists. The cultural ecosystem has evolved during the pandemic. In fact, both parts, artists and organisations, can be supported or supporters interchangeably.

This week I benefitted from lots of different stimuli finding relief in literature, art, and social initiatives. They reminded me that the world is still full of hope, dreams, creativity and, above all, human beings ready to stand-up in support of each other and their values.

May 15, 2020

Social distancing – Week 7: Home Cooking – “Collective Intelligence” a collectively owned artwork

Home Cooking, “a digest of new artworks, scores, events, and actions started during this time of suspension.” Its first post on Instagram is dated 22^nd March 2020, the day the lockdown started in London. The project was kicked off by the British artist Marianna Simnett together with peer artists and friends. Home Cooking is a platform where artists, creatives, and thinkers from around the world share their ideas and projects. How? Through Instagram posts and takeovers, Livestream interventions, conversations, and interviews on Instagram, Twitch, and Zoom. Art is the beating heart of the project.

It is though Home Cooking that I learnt about the new typeface, “Emergence”, created by artist Agnieszka Kurant in collaboration with designer and typographer Radim Pesko. The font is the result of a couple of years of work during time which the duo has been collecting and analysing 26 different typefaces. Like in a puzzle, “Emergence” has been made by assembling small parts obtained by breaking down the structure of the 26 fonts. On Friday 24th April, during the project presentation in Home Cooking, Kurant and Pesko unveiled the first version of “Emergence.” They explained that the font could take on different shapes and change by diversifying the assembling combinations. After the initial presentation, Kurant launched an open call inviting artists, writers, and thinkers to participate by submitting a sentence that reflects on the Coronacene. The gathered sentences will form a collectively owned artwork, “Collective Intelligence.” The open call announces that the collectively made work would be auctioned so to generate revenue to be shared among the artwork’s authors.

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From Home Cooking – 12th May 2020:

Dear friends and friends of friends,
A few days ago on Home Cooking, we launched a collective-intelligence artwork that I developed together with the typographer Radim Pesko — the typeface we called “Emergence.”
A video of the presentation and discussion we had for Home Cooking with the sociologist Janek Sowa and the theorist Stephen Wright around the concepts behind Emergence can be found here:
https://vimeo.com/414483803
We are kindly inviting artists, writers, and thinkers to send us a single phrase or sentence, reflecting on the ways in which today, especially during the Coronacene, both the self and the crowd have mutated into new, unexpected forms. Let’s think and talk about collective intelligence, the evolution and plasticity of the social brain and social bonds, self-organization, solidarity, the multitude, the self as polyphony, and the future of singular versus hybrid/collective authorship and sympoiesis/collective creativity. Please send us single phrases or sentences around these questions and we will turn them into individual posters using the Emergence typeface. This collection of posters will form Collective Intelligence: an artwork based on collective authorship, collective ownership, and profit sharing. Our goal is for this artwork/collection to be exhibited as a whole and collectively owned by many “shareholders,” both institutions and individuals. We hope to auction the poster collection’s “shares” several times and each time redistribute the profits among participating artists, writers, and thinkers who need it most these days. It could develop into many interesting directions. Please send your contributions (a single sentence or phrase) to Radim Peško mail@radimpesko.com or myself info@kurantstudio.com. Please share this freely with other artists, writers, and thinkers.

The investigative aspect of “Collective Intelligence” dominates the whole project. The resulting artwork and its potential sales and profit will test not only the possibility to generate income for a group but also the concepts of collective ownership and authorship. Whereas, it is no doubt that thinking about Universal Basic Income and testing its feasibility is crucial in the age of Coronacene. As the project requires the mental switch from individual to a collective mind-set with the subsequent knockdown of capitalistic ideas, I expect this to generate extensive debate. So, let’s stay tuned and follow the project on #collectiveintelligence and @____homecooking____

May 6, 2020

Social distancing – Week 6: “2 Lizards” by Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki

Have you ever read “The Best and The Worst of The Art World” which Artnet publishes every Friday? It is a bullet point list of news divided into two categories, predictably “Best” and “Worst”. Reading it is for fun. It is like taking a quiz in which one can also learn by reading just the news in capsules. Often, while going through the list, I become curious about something and decide to go deeper by clicking on the article links. It was in this way that I found out about the popular video series, “2 Lizards”. The project was launched on Instagram IGTV in early March by artist Meriem Bennani, in collaboration with documentary filmmaker Orian Barki (both millennials and based in New York).

The series is presented in 2-minute episodes mixing 3D-renderings of animals set against real footage. The main characters are two lizards living in Brooklyn during the lockdown sharing their thoughts, concerns, and feelings of isolation. The neighbours are animals of other species. Since the first episode (there are five to date), the artist duo has been contacted by creatives willing to contribute to the project. So, they opened up and started remote collaborations with friends and peers, adding soundtracks and voices to the films.

Episode 1 went viral getting more than 154k views at the time of writing. How comes that these short videos are so popular??? They are comforting. We can easily identify with the animated characters as they express our own feelings perfectly. In fact, both plots and dialogues are taken from everyday situations we are all living through in this strange time of social distancing. In the first chapter, the 2 lizards snoop at their neighbourhood from a terrace while conversing on the quarantine optimistically. “In a fucked up way, I’m loving this,” says one. The other answers back: “That is such a quarantine week one thing to say.”

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Episode 4 is about a feline nurse’s day-to-day life who talks with the two reptiles. The cat-nurse reports one heart-breaking event that happened during one of her shifts at the hospital. A patient connected to a ventilator, telephones his wife. The nurse, who was holding the mobile to the patient’s ear, explains how bad she felt as all the wife could hear was a ventilator. The video ends with the ubiquitous clapping for carers from balconies, and the nurse asserting “this pandemic has made me way cooler than I really am.”

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A post shared by Meriem Bennani (@meriembennani)

Episode 5 is probably the most iconic of the series until now. The 2 reptiles go out for a stroll in a deserted New York City. They discuss how the city has changed and how, after all, still looks normal if not for the frozen economy. At a certain point, one of the lizards gets a call from her French mother. The mother-daughter chat reveals a condition familiar to many living in big cities, living overseas from their families while having news updates from home countries. When the phone call ends, the other companion needs to pee. Soon the buddies realise nothing is really the same during the lockdown. Starbucks is closed, and the lizard answers the call of nature in Time Square, pointing out that there is nobody around.

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A post shared by Meriem Bennani (@meriembennani)

Bennani and Barki cunningly translate what we hear and see on TV and social media onto these witty micro-videos. What I felt from watching the episodes is that I am a person like many others. I find in these short animations something that belongs to me too, hope and anxiety. The reptiles’ lives and their dialogues perfectly embody our current ordinary in the uncertainty of the pandemic.

April 21, 2020

Social distancing – Week 4: The Ozone Layering Method by Keiken

This week I explore the Ozone project by the art collective based in Berlin and London, KeiKen, who took over Hek’s Instagram page last Tuesday. HeK (House of electronic arts in Basel, CH) invited the collective as part of the lockdown initiative, #HekNetWorks which supports artists’ net-based projects created during the pandemic.

For the event, Keiken launched the Ozone filter, a new Instagram filter through which users could practice meditation connecting with their surrounding environment. The filter generates an augmented reality where the environment is layered onto the users’ face appearing as one entity. The project has been presented as the Ozone Layering Method for which Keiken led Livestream lessons. The collective taught how to use the filter (you can find it on both Hek and Keiken’s Instagram pages) to reach our higher selves through the digital spiritual practice. From the Ozone Layering Method steps: “users must practice still or with slow movements whilst their environment moves around them.” You can practice anywhere, but the best effects are obtained when outside.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-9af0bFKft/

If you use the filter in the open air, your surrounding reflects onto your face. I thought that having the sky on my face was a gorgeous idea, and I decided to try the Ozone filter. As soon as I tried it and had the sky mapped onto my forehead, a song popped up in my mind, “Il Cielo in Una Stanza” (The Sky in a Room) by Gino Paoli (1960). This song was used in 2018 by the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson for a performance co-commissioned by Artes Mundi and National Museum of Wales, “The Sky in a Room” (3^rd Feb – 11^th Mar 2018 at the National Museum of Cardiff). In a video, the artist said: “Gino Paoli wrote about being in a space that suddenly transforms into endless woods, the ceiling becomes sky with stars etc. […] and everything becomes, transforms.”

Therefore, when outdoor using Keiken’s Ozone filter, your head (the walls) clears and becomes sky. The result is potentially endless and pure content that occupies our minds in the digital reality we inhabit while using Instagram. Definitely a beautiful way to use social media during such an uncertain time!

After the takeover of Hek’s Instagram page last week, Keiken announced they will launch a new filter every Tuesday of the lockdown. Today is Tuesday, so stay tuned, meditate, and visit @_Keiken_ to find out what’s next!

Screenshot taken from Keiken story of Monday 21st April.

April 14, 2020

Social distancing – Week 3: “Stay at Home” & [The Art Happens Here] by Annka Kultys Gallery

screenshot of Surface Collider (23032020), 2020, by James Irwin. Featured in week 1 of “Stay at Home” at AKG

At the beginning of April, Annka Kultys Gallery – a commercial gallery based in East London founded by Annka Kultys in 2015 which represents artists working in the digital sphere – launched a new online platform, [The Art Happens Here]. The platform will showcase “Stay at Home”, a new exhibition of digital art made in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. As with many other galleries, soon after the lockdown announcement in March, AKG switched its exhibition programme to a digital viewing room. However, [The Art Happens Here] is an online project on its own which extends beyond the existing gallery programme. The new platform opens up, as written in AKG newsletter, to “online projects of any artist interested in the internet as place of production and distribution.”

[The art happens here] is an important development in the gallery’s evolution, one that not insignificantly mirrors the evolution of artists’ practices and indeed art itself.

Every Sunday during the lockdown, “Stay at Home” showcases a new artist who investigates the pandemic situation. The artists are selected through an open call, and the exhibition is free and open to everyone (you can access through [The Art Happens Here]). Over the weeks, new posts are added so that, through solo presentations, “Stay at Home” becomes a group show. The idea is not new to AKG. In fact, presenting collective exhibitions through one-week solo shows is a familiar format to Annka Kultys who, the past winter, opened “Cacotopia 04” (11^th Jan – 15^th Feb 2020), the fourth edition of the gallery’s annual survey of leading emerging artists in the contemporary art space. Like “Stay at Home”, also “Cacotopia” four editions are group exhibitions presented in the format of solo shows allocated to a single artist every week.

week 3 AKG Instagram story 1 of 2 – Open Call

Whereas the two projects are similar, they are not identical. In fact, “Cacotopia” lasts four weeks and consequently showcases four artists only. While “Stay at Home” will present a new artist each week the lockdown goes on. Hopefully, these will be just a handful of weeks, but as we can see from other countries, the lockdown could last 10 weeks or more (i.e., Italy is in its 7^th week and the lockdown has just been extended for another month. Now planned to end early May 2020). Therefore, by continuing over time and presenting more artists, there is potential that “Stay at Home” will become a much bigger and more articulated project than its older brother “Cacotopia” and could even serve as new digital art database.

screenshot of Social Distancing Portraits, 2020, by Adad Hannah. features in week 2 of “Stay at Home” at AKG

On one side, the group exhibition format of single-artist-presentations allows “Stay at Home” to be identified as a creature of Annka Kultys Gallery progressively establishing the gallery signature. On the other side, the gallery is not only doing a great act of gallantry by giving a chance to ‘any’ artist to be exhibited by a commercial gallery but also providing a platform, namely [The Art Happens Here], where art made during the quarantine can be seen by the people.

Ah! and if this is not enough, all the gallery benefits of the sold works will be donated for Coronavirus research!

week 3 AKG Instagram story 2 of 2 – Open Call

April 7, 2020

Social distancing – week 2: How Chalton Gallery strengthens its role of art ambassador during the Coronavirus pandemic.

In the past two weeks, I have been following art institutions and galleries on Instagram, listening to Art Tactic podcasts, and reading articles in Artnet news and Frieze. It seems to me that the general feeling switched from optimistic to realist. Optimistic because, initially, the imposed work-from-home to reduce the spread of the virus, together with the increased use of digital platforms were seen as ways to cost-cutting in the overly expensive art industry. Optimism quickly passed its sceptre to a more realist view by unveiling a widespread lack of digital strategies among medium and small art galleries. It seems that many galleries are unprepared to make the best out of their online businesses. Another pitfall of the digital system is its inability to engage audiences by failing to offer memorable experiences to the public. Despite galleries accepting the challenge of keeping businesses going and engaging their public, they are struggling to succeed in this difficult time. The truth is that we are spending a lot of time in front of a screen without experiencing any physical event at all. Is this the right way to get through COVID-19 pandemic and establish a better future? Maybe not. With this question in mind, Chalton Gallery is promoting an alternative way with a call for a period of reflection and introspection.

Chalton Gallery in London & Chalton Projects is a not-for-profit art organisation that operates in Mexico and the UK connecting Mexican artists and cultural institutions with the British art scene. On Sunday 19^th March, the gallery announced its temporary closure to prevent the spread of Coronavirus. Soon, what was planned to be their June show, launched as the online programme by artist Christina Ochoa (Colombian based in Mexico), “Pharakon: Garden of Psychotropical Hope” (the first session is available at https://vimeo.com/399380478 with a contribution of £5 to support the artist’s practice).

Pharmakon is part of Ochoa’s educational and aesthetic ongoing research, in which she investigates the relationship between traditional pharmacy, based on the use of plants as medicinal, and contemporary mode of consumerism. In “Pharakon: Garden of Psychotropical Hope”, the artist will lead a series of online workshops in which she will teach natural recipes that help to relieve us from stress and heal our anxiety. As Ochoa wrote in the workshop page: “this workshop is intended to take us in to the kitchen and find there in a DIY way the poetics of herbaria.”

Tuned with Ochoa’s work, Chalton appeals to a period of meditation and introspection, questioning the race to creating new and more online content in such an uncertain time.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-EZjJnlZPw/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

“We the Art ambassadors have the obligation to respond by restoring order or by creating a new order. We can’t keep calling anything Art and calling ourselves artists if we do not understand the Present and connect back to our selves, our societies, our Mother Earth and to our deep Cosmos.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-fr6jlFXlA/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

The message from Chalton Gallery is a plea for humans to reconnect with nature and asks us to use this time to re-balance through introspection and meditation. At the same time, the gallery is spreading public art by sticking messages in the shop windows that are shut as the effect of the lockdown.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-oukzAlTf3/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

In my opinion, behind what at first sight seems to be a call for non-action (indeed meditation), lays a strong commitment to take action and make more art by using public spaces. In fact, Chalton is using closed shops which, until before the lockdown, were the very places where the everyday social interaction lived. With these messages, empty stores still provide their services to society. Even in the era of social distancing, social interaction can still happen in the physical world, and Chalton Gallery is proving this.

March 31, 2020

Social distancing – Week 1: How König Gallery tackles COVID-19

While art galleries and museums around the world were announcing their temporary closure due to the Coronavirus outbreak, on Friday 13th March 2020, I visited my last exhibition before the lockdown. I live in London – officially, the UK was still ‘business as usual’ at that time and until Tuesday 22^nd March – and the show was “Among the Trees” at Hayward Gallery, a group exhibition about nature and trees showcasing the works of thirty-eight contemporary artists. On that same day, König Gallery (Koenig Galerie), founded in Germany in 2002, announced the temporary closure of their venues in Berlin and London. Now, with its physical spaces shut, how is the gallery managing to keep its audience engaged? Almost instantly after the announcement, the Gallery started leading online tours of their shows in Instagram which quickly developed into the 10am Series.

The 10am Series is open to everyone to join via Instagram on @koeniggalerie and take place twice a day at 10am CEST and 10am EST, which is 3pm CEST. These are live conference calls between the Berlin gallery owner, Johann König, and artists worldwide. At the end of each session, there is the Q&A section through which the public can interact. There are two types of sessions. In the early session, Johann König speaks with the gallery represented artists, discussing their practices, and sharing thoughts on how the future could be when the situation resumes to normal life. While the later session is an open call in which the gallery owner leads random studio visits of artists who join the call in real-time. The style is informal, allowing conversations to be spontaneous and, at times, even funny (after all, who wants to experience art and cry?).

After having watched a few LIVE sessions, I had the fortune to speak with Johann König over the phone and discuss the idea behind the project. He explained to me how the gallery closed its spaces and opened up in social media to keep reaching its audience and fulfil the need for connection, now felt stronger than ever. Clearly though, with the 10am Series, König Gallery is doing something more than just keeping its Instagram profile active with news about their artists and exhibitions. In fact, and as König explained to me, starting from the proposition that art is about the physical experience, the Gallery is committing to offer that sought after experience to its public allowing people to participate in the direct communication. The 10am Series facilitates an open dialogue between not only the gallerist and the artist on call but also with the public who can interact during the Q&A section.

As galleries and cultural organisations around the world had to shut their physical spaces, they have turned to their digital presence. This unprecedented situation allows them to break the standard rules and test new grounds by experimenting with the full potential of social media. What König Gallery is doing with Instagram demonstrates a robust civic commitment towards both its audience and represented artists. In my opinion, aside this being a great way to kick off the day with some art and ideas, the 10am Series should be a source of inspiration for the whole art world and its future.

As Instagram is offering the videos for 24 Hours only, you can watch older sessions on König Gallery YouTube-Channel.