Event: <<<(((Mods & Hackers)))>>> (Paul Young Gallery, Los Angeles, May 26 - August 30 2011)
Eva & Franco Mattes, My Generation, installation, 2010
"Our world is now defined by digital technologies and communication in ways that we've never experienced before. Therefore, if an artist is to be truly contemporary, he or she must come to terms with that language and transform it in a way that reflects, or perhaps, predicts, our current relationships to ourselves and art in general. Dada artists did the same at the dawn of Modernism, and Guy Debord and the Situationists laid some of the groundwork for the way artists can engage in these very same ideas.
For its summer show Young Projects will be focusing on interactive videos by artists who are are looking to video game modification, hacking, patching and other code-based practices as the most appropriate reflection of these new times. For these artists, who hail from six different countries, video games have replaced cinema in terms of its importance, influence and engagement, and therefore offer the best models for exploring 21st century ideas of space, psychogeography, aesthetics, communication, the virtual, gender issues and much more.
Eddo Stern (US), Gazira Babeli (Italy), Palle Torsson (Sweden), Eva & Franco Mattes (Italy), Jenifer & Kevin McCoy (US), Joseph DeLappe (US), Daniel Franke (Germany), Alison Mealey (UK), Mark Napier (US), Mark Essen (US), Jonathan Cecil (US), Antonio Mendoza (US), Audri Phillips (US), and Jon 9 (US) have contributed works ranging from small monitor pieces to large-scale installations. Some of which will be using new technologies that have never been seen within contemporary art spaces before. Daniel Franke’s “Durchsehen” (“Augmented Perspective”, 2011) for instance, uses video camouflage techniques developed by the military to make a cement block dematerialize before the viewer’s eyes. Audri Phillips and Jon 9, by contrast, will be enhancing dimensionality by using an autostereoscopic 3D screen by Alioscopy, which produces an extraordinarily deep image without viewing glasses."
Link: Paul Young Gallery located at the Pacific Design Center, West Hollywood CA (Part of the Design Loves Art, DLA, program) - Hours 11-5pm T-F, by appointment on Saturdays.
Submitted by Matteo Bittanti