Event: Cory Arcangel's "This is all so crazy, everybody seems so famous" (March 31 - June 28, 2015, Bergamo, Italy)

1 April 2015 to 28 June 2015 — Curated by: Stefano Raimondi

Palazzo della Ragione / Sala dei Giuristi

Piazza Vecchia - Bergamo, Italy

Opening: 31 March 2015, 7 p.m.

From 1 April to 28 June 2015, GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Bergamo is pleased to present This is all so crazy, everybody seems so famous, the first solo exhibition at an Italian institution by the American artist Cory Arcangel (b. Buffalo, 1978; lives and works in New York).

"Cory Arcangel’s work revolves around the concept of safeguarding identity as well as digital and physical memory; his aim is to revive the importance of tradition through an interest in therelationship between technology and culture, between territory and innovation, but also through the appropriation and reuse of media. His works reflect and act within a contemporary society that is powerfully digitalized, liquid and continually changing, in which the effective value of things is destined to be lost in a short time to make way for new products - simulacra of value. Arcangel is interested in saving from obsolescence those technological objects that, until a few years ago, seemed to be avant-garde but now lie unused, condemned to an atemporality that is almost metaphysical and is no longer accessible. Although he grew up during the technological boom – when mobile phones, videogames, computers, the Internet, and the relevant updates and upgrades began to spread – Arcangel’s approach towards the society of consumption and mass communication is not that of the user or spectator, but of the hacker who can manipulate data and thus give them a new meaning. For example, this action is visible in the well-known work The Super Mario Clouds (2002), in which the famous game is modified: most of the architectural elements have been eliminated, leaving only clouds floating against a blue background.In this way, for the first time importance is given to representation and pictorial space in videogames. For the artist, manipulation is also sharing: the instructions and source codes to execute different works are available on his website but also in a series of publications entitled The Source. This attempt at safeguarding and action is also taken up by the exhibition title – This Is All So Crazy, Everybody Seems So Famous – a quotation from the hit song by the icon of teen pop music, Miley Cyrus.The craving for one’s famous “fifteen minutes of fame” noted by Andy Warhol conceals the obsolescence inscribed in that time, so limited and vacuous with respect to the incessant unfolding of the future." (GaMec)

By the way, the catalog for the show is going to look like a teen magazine akin to BOP or Tiger Beat. “It’s designed like a teen magazine that would have One Direction on the cover, but instead of them and pop stars through out; it is pictures of all my work,”

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Here's a sneak preview:

Submitted by Matteo Bittanti (via Cory Arcangel)