Tag Installation

Entries 18 Total

Josephine Meckseper | The Final Shop « DIS Magazine

Jan 25, ’12 3:42 PM

The misunderstanding that my work should reference an idea of revolutionary chic probably has to do with a projection of that same audience of how they view their environment. Contrary to this belief, I see my work as a call for street activism, in opposition to a rarified elitist art viewership. My aim is to present consumer display systems that have an auto-critique built within. This can take place, for instance, by inserting images of the opposition produced by capitalist society, namely protestors and rioters, or by using pieces of shattered glass. As a starting point I usually work with films of riots and protests and confront them with forms that refer directly to shop windows smashed by demonstrators. The installations of display forms like shelves and vitrines represent the static face of capitalism. The collective performative aspect of consumption is frozen inside the vitrine and the flip side of capitalism (like images of exploited factory workers) is literally glued to the back of displayed objects. The concealed power structures that are the core of alienated production are made visible here.

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“New Document” at Johansson Projects Reviewed in Artforum

Jan 5, ’12 8:52 PM

My first review for Artforum’s Critics Picks section just went live to their site. I covered the group show “New Document” at Johansson Projects in Oakland, CA. Teaser below, full article here.

Hunter Longe and Matthew Draving’s floor-bound sculpture Open Screen Unit (all works 2011) grounds many of the ideas afoot in this concise group show. Here, a projection of a mesh pattern shines through a sheet of mesh draped over a square frame, producing an ethereal illumination. The title indicates that this “screen” is not a surface for the serial, filmic play of images, but a site that responds to the simultaneous, software-enabled production of images. Indeed, throughout the exhibition screens are employed not as spaces of fixity or one-way transmission, but as sites open to fluidity and mutation by their environment and the user.

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A new documentation. an interview to joao vasco paiva – Robin Peckham

Dec 12, ’11 12:32 AM

João Vasco Paiva (n. 1979) is a Portuguese artist based in Hong Kong since 2006. He has taught at the City University of Hong Kong School of Creative Media and Hong Kong Art School/ RMIT University. With a background in painting and advanced training in media technology, his work is characterized by the appropriation of observed phenomena, mapping apparently random situations and presenting them in an aesthetically organized framework through video, audiovisual performance, recording, and installation.

One of his best known projects in this rubric is Experiments on the Notation of Shapes (2010): taking the city as a sculptural playground, two projections present images of the Hong Kong skyline at a distance: largely still, contemplative, and gray, they offer a dispassionate glimpse of urban planning and architectonic monumentality. Facing the ceiling in a box on the floor, a monitor depicts a different vision, frenetically winding through back alleys and service roads amidst the architecture of spectacle, and generating an audio signal that is, in turn, modulated in frequency by the projected images. The resulting cocoon of sound and image runs the gamut of the urban experience, from the quietest moments of stillness to the madness of the intersection.

More recently, the project Forced Empathy (2011) consists of a single-channel video, a kinetic sculpture, and a series of prints. A number of floating objects in the harbor of Hong Kong subject to wind, waves, and other factors causing them to bob and sway, sometimes gently but other times rather wildly, are recorded by a stationary camera. When edited, the filmic object is computationally “forced” to remain stable and equidistant from all edges of the frame, such that the background environment inversely adopts the motion of the floating platform and takes on the role of visual noise. A wooden sculpture of the floating object is kinetically animated to inversely follow the motion of the video, causing a moment of confused parallelism in flat image and habitable space. Behind this kinetic moment of mimicry sits a simple graphic print, an abstraction of the harbor background.
 
His aesthetics often emerges at the point where generative processes come into contact with urban topographies, exploring control through randomness and quotation. The work discussed here is concerned with new modalities of documentation that rewrite originary aesthetics—creating new worlds as it restructures our shared sphere of perception. As Paiva prepares his latest solo exhibition, Palimpsest, which consists of an electronic installation, generative video, prints, and paintings based on the non-space of the mass transit station, he responds to a few questions about the role of new media in his practice and the status of the outsider in cosmopolitan Hong Kong. The exhibition opens at Saamlung in Hong Kong on 18 November.

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Object Orientations

Nov 22, ’11 6:23 PM

In his 1967 essay, “Art and Objecthood”, Michael Fried bemoaned the theatricality of minimalist sculpture, which replaced the presentness of compositional sculpture with the staging of an experience for the viewer as performer. His argument has since been inverted by artists and art writers invested in the idea of sculptures as props forming part of an artistic experience economy. This discourse has accompanied the rise of relational aesthetics as a dominant paradigm for contemporary art. More recently, however, there has been a turn away from relationality to ‘object-oriented’ art, where objects are seen to stage their own theatrical experiences, performing themselves without requiring the activation of a viewer’s body. In this essay, we trace parallels between the philosophy of Bruno Latour and the and this emerging trend in sculpture. In ascribing agency to objects, Latour proposes a radical shift from philosophy’s traditional investigation of the relationship between the mind and the world. Drawn to the idea that matter can be creative, artists have embraced his thinking. However, we would like to argue that this has lead to a generalized, universalizing humanism that disables political action. Moreover, it undermines the potential for anti-humanist critique latent in object-oriented philosophy.

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Rhizome | Artist Profile: Artie Vierkant

Nov 10, ’11 8:29 PM

The thinking behind Image Objects has always been that by introducing distortions (and layers of other imagery) into the images I can make the viewing experience on the Internet or through other mediated sources fundamentally different from viewing the objects in an installation setting. It also allows me to make a lot more pieces than I could otherwise. These all start as digital files, so ultimately it’s rather arbitrary at what point I decide that a file I’m working on is ready to be physically produced—any one of these could easily have undergone more changes, had more or less layers, &c. So by having a piece produced physically and then splitting it into all of these different variations I have the opportunity to sort of go back into it and reshape it into all of the other shapes it could have been.

All of this does stem a bit from, yes, feeling that for the most part installation photographs very accurately represent what a physical sculpture looks like. When I see documentation of works before I visit the exhibition, usually the act of visiting does little more than produce a sense of deja vu. Even if not, install photos are usually an idealized version of the pieces that make them look closer to how the artist intended them to look.

The problem with this is that, really, it’s so much easier and for the most part makes so much more sense now to just Photoshop or 3D-sculpt how you want your work to look rather than ever printing it or painting it or assembling it. That was part of the impetus behind Image Objects as well. If I’m going to be making a physical object that will be seen 99% of the time through another image I felt there should be something unique about both types of experiences. Otherwise, why have the physical object at all?

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Review of Jennie C. Jones’s Exhibit “Absorb/Diffuse” in the Wire

Nov 7, ’11 5:30 PM

I wrote a review of a solo exhibition by Jennie C. Jones entitled “Absorb/Diffuse” in the November issue of the Wire. The exhibit was up at the Kitchen in New York City from September through October. I won’t give it away, but I examine how Jones integrates aspects of graphic notation into her practice. You can read the full article in the print or digital edition, available here.

"Absorb/Diffuse" at the Kitchen (Photo: David Allison, courtesy of The Kitchen)

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Solo show in Sim City

Nov 2, ’11 5:37 PM

Sim City 2000 Performances and Installations by Kim Asendorf

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Institute 193 | Blog

Aug 16, ’11 9:17 PM

In his show, “Cream Grid Reruns,” Robert Beatty repurposes outmoded technologies to create hybridized sculptures, drawings, and installations. An anagram for “recurring dreams,” “Cream Grid Reruns” blurs sensory boundaries, and presents a unique vision of the fusion of the organic and the artificial. Beatty’s work will be on display at Institute 193 until mid-September.

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Better than a haunted house…

Oct 29, ’10 1:24 PM

I checked out “Lost Symbols” last Saturday at St. Cecilia’s Convent in Greenpoint, a group show on the occult curated by Victoria Keddie and Jennifer Zazo. The building itself is gorgeous, with crumbling ceilings, old stained glass, and 19th century molding. The exhibit stretches across all four floors of the convent, and the majority of the artists were provided a room of their own to completely take over. There are 30+ artists involved, with performances and screenings each weekend. (Schedule here.) Given the theme, there were plenty of pentagrams, altar candles, incense, and the like. The creepiest work by far was a small room on the third floor, whose walls and ceiling were entirely covered in meticulously neat, ancient-looking script. I had my camera in tow, and took some shots below.

Today and tomorrow are the last days to see Lost Symbols, and the space is open from 11am-11pm.

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Craig Colorusso’s “Sun Boxes”

Apr 14, ’10 1:18 PM

Sun Boxes are an environment to enter and exit. It’s comprised of twenty speakers operating independently each powered by solar panels. There is a different guitar sample in each box all playing together making the composition. The guitar samples are all of different lengths so the whole piece keeps evolving.

Participants are encouraged to walk amongst the speakers. It sounds different inside of the array. There is a different sense of space inside. Certain speakers will be closer and louder therefore the piece will sound different to different people in different positions throughout the array. Creating a unique experience for everyone.

There are no batteries involved. The Sun Boxes are reliant on the sun. When the sun sets the music stops. The piece changes as the length of the day changes. Making the participants aware of the cycle of the day.

Sun Boxes will be on display at the Important Records Compound May 8th, info here.

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