Installation View, Ed Fornieles, Inside Out 2, Carlos/Ishikawa, 2024
Image © Ed Fornieles, courtesy Carlos/Ishikawa, London. Photographer: Damian Griffiths
Installation View, Ed Fornieles, Inside Out 2, Carlos/Ishikawa, 2024
Image © Ed Fornieles, courtesy Carlos/Ishikawa, London. Photographer: Damian Griffiths
Recently presented at Carlos/Ishikawa gallery in London between May 23 – July 6, 2024, Ed Fornieles’s Inside Out 2 is an ambitious exploration of the intersections between corporate structures, personal relationships, and digital interactions, presented through a richly narrative-driven multimedia approach. This project extends Fornieles’ continuous investigation into the dynamics of digital and social spheres, previously exemplified in his Dorm Daze project, where participants inhabited fictional Facebook profiles, blurring the lines between personal and fictional identities.
Central to Inside Out 2 is the conceptualization of a company, Fini, as both a work of art and a corporate entity, challenging traditional notions by positioning the company as a medium that generates value through engagement rather than tangible products. The narrative intricately weaves the concept of friendship into corporate dynamics, prompting profound questions about the nature of relationships within commercial and digital contexts. Drawing on the Brazilian Anthropophagy movement, which advocated for the cultural digestion and transformation of colonial influences, Fornieles illustrates how digital and corporate cultures can be absorbed and reinterpreted.
Installation View, Ed Fornieles, Inside Out 2, Carlos/Ishikawa, 2024
Image © Ed Fornieles, courtesy Carlos/Ishikawa, London. Photographer: Damian Griffiths
The gallery space, referred to as The Zone, acts as a transformative environment where objects and concepts are recontextualized, allowing viewers to engage in a suspension of disbelief. Fornieles provocatively suggests that shared hallucinations, or mutual agreements on perceived realities, form the basis of our understanding of the world, thereby challenging the stability of reality itself. The project employs a range of narrative techniques, from cute aesthetics to speculative fiction and historical revisionism, creating a multilayered experience that defies conventional boundaries between fiction and reality.
Installation View, Ed Fornieles, Inside Out 2, Carlos/Ishikawa, 2024
Image © Ed Fornieles, courtesy Carlos/Ishikawa, London. Photographer: Damian Griffiths
Envisioning future expansions, Fornieles introduces the Oom app, positioned at the intersection of messaging and mobile gaming, and a movie that combines live-action with animation, further extending the project "narrative universe. By discussing the role of venture capital in the growth of new companies, Fornieles draws intriguing parallels between the ambitions of artists and venture capitalists in their shared pursuit of world-building, highlighting the economic and philosophical challenges of sustaining such an innovative endeavor. Inside Out 2 is a complex work that invites viewers to interrogate contemporary culture through the lenses of corporate structures, digital identities, and personal relationships, urging a reconsideration of how we engage with the so-called “digital”.
