Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

Data Soliloquies
11th May – 10th June 2017

This exhibition comprises a trilogy of interconnected works that examines the role of technology and data and how it relates to the human condition in an age of hyper information. In a world dominated by digital media and the instant accessibility of information, his practice crosses the boundary between art and science to reveal the paradox of the promise of infinite knowledge and an absolute vision against its impossibility due to the transient nature of human perception.

Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

The Fundamental Units: The lowest denomination coin from each of the world’s 166 active currencies are photographed to vast scale using an infinite focus, optical 3D microscope. Printed to a size of 1.2 x 1.2 metres from files with over 400 million pixels, the hyper-real level of detail, beyond normal vision, reveals the material construction and make-up of the coin together with the marks and traces from their circulation and use as tokens of exchange.

Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

A Planetary Order: This is a 3D scale model of the earth showing cloud cover from one single moment in time. Raw information from one second’s worth of readings from all six cloud monitoring satellites overseen by NASA and ESA is transformed into a physical visualisation of real-time scientific data that delicately outlines and profiles the clouds emerging across the sphere. The sphere, or globe, has no added colour, only the sculpted whiteness of the raw material that throws a maze of faint shadows across the structure.

Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

Text Trends: This looks at our perception of words and data when displayed in graphical form. Through animation, it uses Google data to explore the content generated by search queries and reduces this process to its essential elements: search terms -vs- frequency searched over time, presented in the form of a graph. The viewer watches the animation plot out the ebb and flow of search terms generated by internet users around the world. Pairs of words such as ‘now and later’ and ‘summer and winter’ play out matter-of-factly, with all the passion of a market index. Originally an animation, it has also been commissioned as a series of prints.

Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

I Wanted to See All of the News From Today: collects everyday over 600 front covers of newspapers from around the world.

Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

Data Soliloquies, solo exhibition at Argentea Gallery, Birmingham

Argentea Gallery

Data Soliloquies, exhibition. Essay by Thierry Fournier

Data Soliloquies, exposition. Essai par Thierry Fournier

Opening invite

Argentea Gallery
28 St Paul’s SquareBirmingham B3 1RB
United Kingdom

Data Soliloquies, exhibition. Essay by Thierry Fournier

Martin John Callanan, Data Soliloquies

en français

In his short story “The Library of Babel”, published in 1944, the Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges imagines the whole of human culture brought together in a labyrinthine library. The books it contains represent the obsessive organisation of all conceivable human thought, in every language and from its beginnings. The concept harks back to the idea that knowledge could ultimately be grasped in its entirety, leading to mastery and omnipotence.

The artwork of Martin John Callanan (Birmingham, 1982) inevitably recalls this literary allusion, but it is immediately clear that it illustrates the way in which our relationship with technology has exactly reversed the terms of its argument. In contrast to Borges, who imagined that all knowledge could be made visible in one place, Callanan acknowledges that today we live in a decentralised information network that irrevocably determines the way we live. When he describes himself as “an artist researching an individual’s place within systems”, the “place” he refers to does not describe an aesthetic relationship in the traditional sense, in which the observer is dissociated from the things observed; it assumes that we are inextricably connected with them.

The exhibition Data Soliloquies establishes a relationship between three works that are clearly complementary in this way. The sculpture A Planetary Order features a 3D scale model of the earth, on which a series of satellite data is combined to show the exact state of the Earth’s cloud cover on a given date. It stands on the floor, making it seem vulnerable, and demonstrates that a phenomenon that is so transitory, while at the same time represented by “hard” data, is fundamentally impossible to grasp, and always beyond complete human perception: technology has not overridden what is incommensurable. The printed series Text Trends is a statistical comparison of Google searches for pairs of words, from 2004 to the present. The self-referential nature of the relationships between the chosen words (winter/summer, buy/sell, etc.) and the fierce humour that emerges from them, reflect the expectations embodied in these statistics: they represent actual searches of users. Something that might be taken as a single measurement reveals itself to be also an oracle, whose performativity determines our behaviour. Lastly, The Fundamental Units is a series of images each of which shows the smallest value coin used in various national currencies, photographed using a 3D optical microscope at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, UK. These images are then expanded and printed in extra-large formats, so that they show the all traces of the handling they have undergone, and thus the paradoxical physicality of money, whose exchange is now entirely dematerialised.

Despite their power and clear visual precision, these objects sometimes appear cold, as if placed at a distance: the white earth, statistics, coins. They are the product of a conceptual, minimalist approach that emphasises protocol. In addition, they contain no trace of the artist: unlike other recent conceptual works which compare human physicality with repetitive systems, as in the case of Roman Opalka or On Kawara, Martin John Callanan does not introduce his own actions into his work, or only very rarely. Moreover and strictly speaking, it hardly matters if we know the positions of the clouds on a given date, the development of Google searches or the way in which the coins in our pockets have aged: in themselves these facts and these objects include nothing that would give them the status of an artwork. In that case, where do we get the feeling that these works speak so profoundly about ourselves?

It is at once clear that what these artworks have in common is that they talk about value, and its direct connection with the way generalised quantification has become the dominant paradigm and the universal criterion for representing and evaluating human affairs. Callanan also addresses the idea of value from a very specific point of view, namely an almost deliberate focus on representing totalities. An overview of his work reveals the consistency of that approach, seen even in their titles: every flight departure, every internet search, every war waged during the artist’s lifetime, all his actions when using software, every telephone number, the number of people who have ever lived, the number of days of his life, every newspaper front-page, every cloud present above the earth at a given moment, to visit the whole of London, and so on. This approach may seem simplistic but it selects precisely those phenomena to which our sensory experience never gives us complete access. Given that the world of data is characterised by the very fact that the global calculations performed by systems are beyond human perception, can artworks reverse that relationship?

We then see that each of these artworks takes a specific physical form, which reflects a profound knowledge of coding, networks and computing, applied to a wide range of forms: sculptures, prints, artists’ books, objects or performances. Using this vocabulary, Callanan offers a parallel set of “aiming devices” that connect the various totalities in order to show more clearly that we can never have complete control over them: having departure times appear briefly on a screen or a town crier proclaim the dates of wars; printing the clouds on a 3D sculpture that cannot be seen as a whole; demonstrating the performative nature of statistics and opinion polls and the physicality of money, or creating a publication that cannot be read due to its enormous scale. Each of these situations creates a paradox: they open up a divide between, on the one hand, the promise of omniscience and a totalising vision, and on the other, its impossibility, due to the inevitably fugitive and local nature of human perception. It is in this gap, this falling-short, that the agency of Callanan’s works resides.

In this way, by creating a very specific relationship between these successive stages –value, totality, promise and falling-short – Callanan reveals what we expect from these representations. It is a question not so much of value itself, than the desire for value; less one of totality than the dream of totality, less one of control than of what eludes it. All of these issues bring us back to the human condition, its desires and its limitations. This is where we find the poetic but also the profoundly critical aspects of a body of work that brings us face to face with the multiple manifestations of the infinite, only to assert our inability to embrace it. The artwork also emphasises the radically futile nature of all approaches that place an excessive emphasis on technology. What differentiates us from the “systems” invoked by the artist is that we also find meaning in things we do not understand.

This brings to mind the writer and critic John Berger, who showed that one of the specific characteristics of art is not to represent things in themselves but to identify the way we see them, enabling us to interrogate the ways in which that experience is formed and determined, including politically. At a time when many projects facing the issues raised by digital cultures fall into the trap of the figuration (of data, artificial intelligence, surveillance and so on), Martin John Callanan assumes the vain character of such an approach and positions himself at a point where his research leads us to a vertigo. With his characteristic modesty, with his works, their “data soliloquies” and the way they suggest that we would never seize them, he illuminates the specificity of the human’s condition vis-à-vis the immensity of the world.

Thierry Fournier
Aubervilliers, April 2017

Thierry Fournier is a French artist and curator. He also co-directs the curatorial research group Ensad Lab Displays. He lives and works in Aubervilliers.

Translation Imogen Forster

en français

Data Soliloquies, exposition. Essai par Thierry Fournier

in English

Dans sa nouvelle La Bibliothèque de Babel publiée en 1944, l’écrivain argentin Jorge Luis Borges imagine la totalité de la culture humaine exposée dans une bibliothèque à l’architecture labyrinthique. Les livres qu’elle rassemble contiennent toute la pensée imaginable, dans toutes les langues et depuis les origines, obsessionnellement mis en ordre. L’ensemble évoque la promesse d’accéder enfin à la totalité de la connaissance, à travers le rêve d’une maîtrise et d’une toute-puissance du savoir.

Si le travail de Martin John Callanan (Birmingham, 1982) évoque immanquablement cette image littéraire, c’est pour constater aussitôt qu’il témoigne de la manière dont nos relations à la technologie en ont précisément renversé les termes. À l’inverse de Borges qui imaginait que l’ensemble du savoir puisse être visible en un seul lieu, Callanan prend acte que l’humain contemporain est pris dans un réseau d’informations décentralisées qui conditionnent en permanence son existence. Lorsqu’il se décrit comme « an artist researching an individual’s place within systems » (un artiste explorant la place de l’individu parmi des systèmes), la « place » qu’évoque l’artiste ne décrit pas une relation esthétique au sens classique qui dissocierait l’observateur des objets observés : elle prend acte que nous sommes pris dans leurs logiques.

L’exposition Data Soliloquies met ainsi en relation trois œuvres dont les propos sont particulièrement complémentaires à cet égard. La sculpture A Temporary Order figure le globe terrestre en impression 3D à petite échelle, sur lequel est gravé l’état exact des nuages à une date donnée, obtenue par la combinaison de séries d’images par satellite. Posée au sol, comme vulnérable, elle met en évidence qu’un phénomène aussi fugitif, même figé et représenté par ses données, demeure radicalement insaisissable et continue à échapper à notre perception : la technique n’a pas désactivé l’incommensurable. La série d’impressions Text Trends montre quant à elle des statistiques comparées de paires de mots issues des requêtes sur Google de 2004 à nos jours. Le caractère tautologique des associations de mots choisis et l’humour féroce qui s’en dégage (été-hiver, acheter-vendre, etc.) témoigne des attentes que reflètent ces statistiques : il s’agit bien de requêtes formulées par des utilisateurs. Ce que l’on pourrait prendre comme une seule mesure est aussi un oracle, dont la dimension performative conditionne nos comportements. Enfin, The Fondamental Units est une série d’images montrant chaque fois les plus petites unités de pièces de monnaies internationales, photographiées au microscope électronique au National Physical Laboratory de Teddington (Royaume-Uni). Ces images sont ensuite démesurément agrandies et imprimées sur de très grands formats, révélant alors toutes les traces des échanges dont elles ont été l’objet – et, par la même, la physicalité paradoxale d’une monnaie dont les échanges sont aujourd’hui entièrement dématérialisés.

Malgré leur force et leur précision plastique évidente, ces objets sont parfois froids, comme mis à distance : globe blanc, statistiques, pièces de monnaie. Ils héritent d’une approche conceptuelle et minimaliste qui privilégie les protocoles. En outre, toute trace de l’artiste en est absente : par opposition à des démarches qui, dans l’histoire de l’art récente, ont confronté l’humain et sa corporéité à des systèmes répétititifs, comme celles de Roman Opalka ou de On Kawara, Martin John Callanan – à de très rares exceptions – ne met pas en jeu ses propres actions. En outre, à strictement parler, peu nous importe de savoir quelles étaient les positions des nuages à une date donnée, de connaître l’évolution de requêtes sur Google ou encore comment vieillit la petite monnaie : ces faits ou ces objets en eux-mêmes n’évoquent rien qui les rapprocheraient du statut d’une œuvre. Comme extraits du monde, ils semblent être des objets trouvés dans un champ de données. D’où nous vient alors le sentiment que ces œuvres nous parlent aussi profondément de nous-mêmes ?

Le premier constat qui émerge alors est que ces œuvres ont toutes en commun de parler de la valeur, qui interroge directement la manière dont la quantification généralisée s’est imposée aujourd’hui comme paradigme dominant et comme critère omniprésent de représentation et d’évaluation de l’humain. Callanan convoque en outre cette notion de valeur à travers une perspective très spécifique, qui est de viser presque systématiquement la représentation de totalités. Un regard sur l’ensemble de ses œuvres témoigne de la constance de cette démarche, que l’on retrouve même dans leurs titres : toutes les partances de vols, toutes les recherches sur internet, toutes les guerres pendant ma vie, toutes mes commandes sur un logiciel, tous les numéros de téléphone, le nombre de tous ceux qui ont jamais vécu, le compte de tous les jours de ma vie, toutes les unes de la presse, tous les nuages présents en un instant au-dessus de la Terre, voir tout Londres, etc. Cette démarche de all-everything pourrait sembler simpliste mais elle sélectionne justement des phénomènes auquel notre expérience sensible ne nous donne jamais totalement accès. Alors que le régime des données se caractérise justement par le fait que des totalités calculées par des systèmes échappent à la perception humaine, des œuvres peuvent-elle renverser cette relation ?

On voit alors que ces projets déploient chaque fois une matérialité spécifique, qui témoigne d’une connaissance approfondie du code, du réseau et du numérique tout en embrassant un très large répertoire de formes : sculptures, impressions, livres d’artiste, objets, performances… À travers ce vocabulaire, Callanan propose autant de dispositifs de « visée », qui relatent des totalités pour mieux mettre en évidence l’impossibilité de leur maîtrise : faire fugitivement défiler les horaires de vols sur un écran, faire déclamer les dates des guerres par un crieur, imprimer les nuages sur une sculpture en 3D dont la perception globale est impossible, démontrer le caractère performatif des statistiques et des sondages, mettre en évidence la matérialité de la monnaie, créer une publication devenant illisible par son échelle gigantesque, etc. Chacune de ces situations crée alors un paradoxe : elle ouvre un gouffre entre d’une part la promesse d’une omniscience ou d’une vision totalisante, et d’autre part son impossibilité même, due au caractère irrémédiablement fugitif et local de notre perception. C’est dans cet écart, dans ce manque, que réside fondamentalement l’agentivité de ses œuvres.

Ainsi, par la relation très spécifique que Martin John Callanan élabore entre ces paliers successifs – la valeur, la totalité, la promesse et le manque – il met en évidence ce que nous attendons de ces représentations. Il ne s’agit pas tant de la valeur, que du désir de la valeur ; de la totalité, que du rêve de la totalité ; de la maîtrise, que de ce qui lui échappe. L’ensemble nous ramène à la condition humaine, à son désir et et à ses limites. Ici se revèle la dimension à la fois poétique et fondamentalement critique d’un travail qui nous place face à de multiples manifestations de l’infini pour pointer immédiatement notre impossibilité à l’embrasser, en même temps que le caractère radicalement vain à cet égard de toute démarche techniciste. Ce qui nous différencie des « systèmes » qu’évoque l’artiste est que nous trouvons aussi du sens dans ce que nous ne comprenons pas.

On peut penser ici enfin à l’auteur et critique John Berger, qui relevait qu’une des spécificités de l’art est de ne pas représenter les choses en elles-mêmes mais bien le regard que nous portons sur elles et, par la même, de pouvoir questionner les enjeux de sa formation et de sa détermination (y compris politique). Au moment où, en prise avec les questions ouvertes par la culture numérique, de nombreuses démarches tombent dans le piège de la figuration (des données, de l’intelligence artificielle, de la surveillance…), Martin John Callanan assume ici l’impossibilité radicale d’en venir à bout et s’installe là où cette recherche ouvre sur un vertige. Avec la pudeur qui le caractérise, par ses œuvres, leurs monologues de données et l’incapacité qu’elles évoquent de nous en emparer complètement, il éclaire ainsi la spécificité de la position humaine face à l’infini du monde.

Thierry Fournier
Aubervilliers, avril 2017

Thierry Fournier est un artiste et curateur français. Il co-dirige également le groupe de recherche curatorial EnsadLab Displays. Il vit et travaille à Aubervilliers.

in English

MON3Y AS AN 3RRROR, MON3Y.US

mon3y

Online exhibition from M0US310n.net featuring Digital & Net.Art on the subject of Money & Error, put together by an anonymous curator “Vasily Zaitsev”:

“M0N3Y AS AN 3RRROR | MON3Y.US” proposes to establish connections, dialogues, and new insights into the contemporary art scene around the general topic of MONEY. Around 70 international artists selected with various aesthetic and conceptual approaches who work in fields such as Digital Art, Net.Art , New Media, Interactive Art , Multimedia, JavaScript, Glitch, Video, Online Performance, Animated GIF, and Digital Image.

“M0N3Y AS AN 3RRROR | MON3Y.US” has a display format that promote aesthetic reception of the digital work, to understand it as a fundamental part of the work. In this display format is highlighted each of the works as an artistic piece.

ARTISTS:
Rafaël Rozzendal
Paolo Cirio
Anthony Antonellis
Aaron Koblin + Takashi Kawashima
Systaime
Nuria Güell
Martin John Callanan
Martin Kohout
Dafna Ganani
Thomas Cheneseau
Lorna Mills & Yoshi Sodeoka
Jan Robert Leegte
Jennifer Chan
Kim Asendorf & Ole Fach JUST DO IT
Nick Briz
Nicolas Sasoon
Maximilian Roganov
Mitch Posada
Dominik Podsiadly
Ellectra Radikal
Marco Cadioli
Miron Tee
Andrey Keske
Gusti Fink
Curt Cloninger
Jon Cates
Aoto Oouchi
Cesar Escudero
Nick Kegeyan
Alfredo Salazar Caro | TMVRTX
Robert B. Lisek
Dave Greber
Addie Wagenknecht
Émilie Brout & Maxime Marion
Kim Laughton
Ciro Múseres
Paul Hertz
Keigo Hara
José Irion Nieto
Mathieu St-Pierre
Marc Stumpel
Lars Hulst
León David Cobo
Adam Braffman
Jefta Hoekendijk
Vince McKelvie
Benjamin Berg
Guayaco Coco
George Jacotey
THEREisaMAJORPROBLEMinAUSTRALIA
Haydi Roket
V5MT & Sofía Reta
Fabien Zocco
Adam Ferriss
Yemima Fink
Emilio Vavarella
Azahara Cerezo
Tom Galle
Geraldine Juaréz
Filipe Matos
Gustavo Romano
Erica Lapdat-Janzen
Laturbo Avedon
Kamilia Kard
A Bill Miller
Agente Doble | UAFC
Rollin Leonard
Jasper Elings
Florian Kuhlmann
Milos Rajkovic
Frère Reinert
Rozita Fogelman
Eugenio Tisselli

Born Digital on Paddle8

Paddle8

Paddle8

15 April – 30 April 2014
http://paddle8.com

Born Digital is a benefit auction and an online exhibition made to support the activities of the Link Art Center on the online auction platform Paddle8. The event – the first with this focus taking place in Europe on this scale – will open on April 15, 2014, and will include more than 50 works kindly provided by 33 artists. For two weeks long, you are invited to bid on the works to support the artists and help us reach our goals. The Link Art Center is the first Italian organization collaborating with Paddle8, a web platform organizing monthly themed and benefit auctions, experimenting with the auction format as a means of self-funding.

The complete list of participants includes: Alterazioni Video, Anthony Antonellis, Aram Bartholl, Erik Berglin, Enrico Boccioletti, Heath Bunting, Marco Cadioli, Martin John Callanan, Gregory Chatonsky, Adam Cruces, Caroline Delieutraz, Harm Van Den Dorpel, Constant Dullaart, Electroboutique, Herbert W. Franke, Elisa Giardina Papa, Matteo Giordano, Emilio Gomariz, IOCOSE, Joan Leandre, Jan Robert Leegte, Jonas Lund, Janez Jansa, Janez Jansa, Janez Jansa, JoDi, Eva and Franco Mattes, Rosa Menkman, Filippo Minelli, Vera Molnar, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Angelo Plessas, Evan Roth, Alexei Shulgin, Carlo Zanni.

All the featured artists are either based or born in Europe. The selection includes different generations of artists working with the digital medium and within the digital environment, from early pioneers such as Vera Molnar and Herbert W. Franke, to net.art classics such as JoDi and Alexei Shulgin, to younger artists still in their twenties. The selected works display a wide range of formats, and respond in different ways – sometimes traditionally, sometimes more radically – to the issue of collecting the digital: prints, installations, drawings and videos are joined by animated gifs, websites, printable 3D files and 3D printed sculptures. Some of them display generative images, some others deal with desktop aesthetics; some refer to online habits, cultures and places, others are strictly related to the living and working conditions introduced by the digital shift. They all inhabit networked spaces; they are Born Digital.

Starting prices vary from the very affordable (around 100 € for a video-in-print by Carlo Zanni or a Certificate of Existence by Martin John Callanan) to the higher prices reached by outstanding installations like Jan Robert Leegte’s Scrollbar Composition 2005/2011. If an artwork is sold, 20% of the final price will be used to support the upcoming activities of the Link Art Center.

The LINK Center for the Arts of the Information Age (Link Art Center) is a multi-functional center promoting artistic research with new technologies and critical reflections on the core issues of the information age. Founded in Brescia, Italy, in 2011, the Link Art Center is active locally, internationally and online: it organizes exhibitions, produces artistic and curatorial projects, publishes books. To check out past activities, visit our website: www.linkartcenter.eu. The funds raised will be used to support our ongoing activities: Link Editions, our publishing initiative; Link Point, our project space; and Link Cabinet, our upcoming online gallery.

Paddle8 is an online auction house, connecting buyers and sellers of fine art and collectibles across the world. They offer two types of auctions: monthly themed auctions, and benefit auctions in collaboration with non-profits. More info: http://paddle8.com

The Link Art Center would like to thank all the artists, XPO Gallery (Paris) and DAM Gallery (Berlin) for their amazing support in this initiative.

http://paddle8.com/auctions/linkart

Download the PDF catalogue

Time Out: Open Cube

Time Out London

Time Out says 3/5 stars
Aug 22 2013

You can pretty much ignore the curatorial premise here, which is all about opening up the gallery to new artistic networks. All that really means is that Open Cube is an open submission exhibition. But since the 17 artists in this ‘international group exhibition’ are all young, all London-based and all the products of prominent art schools, it’s hardly the most profound overthrow of established art world values.

When it comes to the works themselves, though, there’s a lot that’s intelligent – and intelligently selected. One strand of the show revolves around notions of wealth and status – such as Jacopo Trabona’s sheets of paper slashed with a diamond and Martin John Callanan’s photographs of a penny, a euro and other units of currency, enlarged and illuminated like archeological treasures. Several other works focus on pattern and decoration, from delicate charcoal tracings of ornamental tiles by Rodrigo Garcia Dutra, to Fay Nicolson’s complex, colourful prints of kaleidoscopic rippling effects.

In fact, the show functions best as an overview of what an emerging generation is interested in. It’s smart and enjoyable, if not quite the system-challenging experiment it reckons itself to be.

Gabriel Coxhead

Prising open the corners of the Cube: Open Cube curated by Adriano Pedrosa at White Cube Mason’s Yard

One Stop Arts

Open Cube brings together the work of 17 artists selected from an open submission and curated by Adriano Pedrosa, a former co-curator of São Paulo Biennale. Spread across two floors with distinct themes, this could easily be two exhibitions.

4/5 stars, Harriet Dopson, 21st August 2013
White Cube Mason’s Yard, until 21-Sep

The ground floor of Open Cube at White Cube Mason’s Yard addresses the ideas of “inside” and “outside” the gallery space, inspired by Brian O’Doherty’s Inside the White Cube, The Ideology of the Gallery Space. Downstairs, in contrast, is a focus on more formal qualities with geometric abstraction and a recurring theme of the circular.

The ground floor is dominated by Nada Prlja’s floor-to-ceiling Peace Wall. The black, chalk board-like wall is covered with messages in German, kid’s drawings, photocopies and paint. What appears to be the end point of some community project is, however, a reproduction. This wall was created after Prlja’s Peace Wall which was part of the 2012 Berlin Biennale. The project challenged the financial divide between the upper and lower city road Friedrichstrasse (a walk away from the former Berlin wall). Here at Open Cube Pedrosa takes a controversial and originally raw work and brings it into the commercial and isolated space of the White Cube. It is an interesting experiment which really highlights the differences between “inside” and “outside” of the white cube – perhaps it is through this effort that Pedrosa is trying to prise open the corners of the cube?

Having described Prlja’s Peace Wall as dominating the ground floor, you may be surprised to learn that in the middle of the same room is a full-scale crumbling column. Made out of reclaimed construction materials, the column still oddly seems to have some kind of precious heritage sentiment attached to it that I can’t shake, as inside the walls of the White Cube the weight and prestige of the exhibit seems to exaggerate it further – perhaps that’s the point.

The ground floor also deals with another very strong political symbol: currency in Martin John Callanan’s photographic series The Fundamental Units. In contrast, Matt Ager’s delicate work Fine doesn’t quite fit in with the bold works of the of the room and his work is perhaps best appreciated above the stairway, in his work Ish, which seems to question you as you make your journey downstairs. The artists Daniel de Paula reflects Ager’s reflective mood in Toward the Great Labyrinth, a documentation of a walk which the artist took until he completed the same titled book by Hélio Oiticica. Another poetic work is Helen Barff’s display of pockets which have been separated from their cloth and filled with concrete or plaster – one of the few indexical works which feels very suited to the small room of the lower ground floor lobby.

The remainder of the lower ground floor space is a harmony of shapes, material and senses. It is extraordinary to think that the exhibition was formed through open submission with no given theme when experiencing this space. Frank Ammerlaan’s huge treated corrugate-steel disk Day’s End appears to watch over the exhibition, setting the tone of the works; the tone is circular, from the circular hole in the table of Nuno Direitinho’s table in Dialogue on Tides, to the circles of Rowena Harris’s wire mobile of photocopies and the endless loop of Nicky Teegan’s sound work Prayer Battery. There is also a richness of materials such as the thick yellow of Sarah Bernhard’s work with bee pollen and the Amish quilt which is spread over a steel structure in Caitlin Yardley’s Black Refract. The works in this room really bounce off each other and it is impossible to account for them all here. It is really is enjoyable to discover these new works, especially as this platform, White Cube gallery is usually for a select few.

It is perhaps here that I should pause on Pedrosa’s concept of an open and transparent cube, which was the purpose of the open submission. It undoubtedly is a triumph to see so many artists have the chance to exhibit together, although I do question how far the boundaries are really being pushed as out of the 2,900 applicants (the only requirement was to be available for an interview in March) over half of the artists who exhibited have studied or are currently studying at RCA or a UAL college. This does feel disappointing if Adriano Pedrosa really was aiming to challenge the “inside” and “outside” of the gallery world. Regardless, the exhibition is an ambitious summer show which really is worth seeing for the strength of both themes and the thoughtful curation of each room – especially in the lower ground floor gallery.

Original review

Charlie Levine goes inside the White Cube for a review of the current exhibition at Mason’s Yard

Art Fetch

For Art Fetch, Charlie Levine goes inside the White Cube for a review of the current exhibition at Mason’s Yard.

Like many curators, I have been hugely influenced by Brian O’Doherty’s wonderful and seminal book, Inside the White Cube, the Ideology of the gallery Space (1976).  The book, which began life as a series of Artforum essays, defined new ways of thinking about exhibitions and the contemporary white walled art gallery. So, when I heard that the latest Mason’s Yard White Cube gallery exhibition, Open Cube, guest curated by Adriano Pedrosa, was inspired directly by O’Doherty’s book, I had to go and see it.

I wasn’t disappointed. Not only is it a fascinating exhibition, but also reflects a great deal of what Artfetch believes in, and is working to achieve. The 17 artists in the exhibition were selected from an open call out for proposals – a brave thing for a gallery with the branded reputation of White Cube – as an open call invites a deluge. The gallery received over 2,900 applications, from which the curator interviewed 38 to select the final group.

This process of deliberately working with artists new to the curator breaks down the idea of curator/artists networks, drawing its concepts from O’Doherty’s ideas about the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ relationships of a gallery. The idea of opening up the application process and allowing audiences, the gallery and the curator to push themselves in terms of looking for, working with and presenting a new stock of artists is incredible, though only in terms of how top level galleries usually work. By this I mean, it shouldn’t be so unusual, and as I considered this, I began to wonder at how difficult it is for new artists to break into these ‘inside’ relationships.

This relates directly to what we are doing at Artfetch, as we believe it is vital to open the processes of becoming an art world insider, so that talented artists can come to the publics who would otherwise not have a chance to see their work. And although internet–based, face to face meetings are a vital part of our commissioning process. If the relationship and quality of work is there, we invite the artist to work with us.

Open Cube itself is broken down into two parts: on the ground floor the exhibition concerns itself with commerce, value and currency; meanwhile, the lower floor of the Mason’s Yard building looks at different forms of abstraction: including constructivist and geometric, as well as organic, amorphous, and fluid types.

Particular stand out works were by Fay Nicholson’s A is for Albers, a small stack of photocopied postcards, sliced in two by a sheet of Perspex; a series of large photographs of foreign coins by Martin John Callanan; and Jacopo Trabona’s Untitled, which was a simple few cuts on a sheet of paper made by slicing a diamond across it. But my particular favourite was Nicky Teegan’s Void a flat circle of woven VHS tape over a bent steel ring.  It summed up the show for me: defunct material (the VHS tape) re–used to create a typical fine art image – the circle.  It was creating something new and conceptual from the old and familiar.

This exhibition is excellent, from its concept to realisation.  It is a must see show that I hope is the start of a new way of thinking about artist/gallery networks, and about how we produce exhibitions and create new associations. The process itself also questions the role of the physical gallery space, as the open method of calling for, and selecting works, echoes the opportunities offered by the internet – something Pedrosa realises, as he notes his ambition for the show: to break down the “seemingly closed systems that exist in the criteria for staging exhibitions”. About time too.

Open Cube, is at White Cube Mason’s Yard, London, until 21 September 2013

Artists: Matt Ager, Frank Ammerlaan, Adriano Amaral, Helen Barff, Sarah Bernhardt, Martin John Callanan, Nuno Direitinho, Venisha Francis–Hinkson, Rodrigo Garcia Dutra, Rowena Harris, Alan Magee, Fay Nicolson, Daniel de Paula, Nada Prlja, Nicky Teegan, Jacopo Trabona and Caitlin Yardley.

Charlie Levine is Chief UK Artfetcher and Curator.

ART STUFF on a train # 13: ‘ Minimum Values’

Most days art Critic Paul Carey-Kent spends hours on the train, traveling between his home in Southampton and his day job in Surrey. Could he, we asked, jot down whatever came into his head?

White Cube’s Masons Yard summer show includes six of Martin John Callanan’s striking series ‘The Fundamental Units’. Callanan uses thousands of exposures via a 3D optical microscope at the National Physical Laboratory to achieve intensely detailed (400 million pixels) images of the lowest denomination coins, here printed at over 50 times life-size. This elevation of the near-worthless reveals the construction and traces of circulation invisible to the naked eye. It also has a mournful aspect, as many of lowest value coins (Callanan has captured 16 of the 166 currently in use) will doubtless be withdrawn from circulation soon enough. As you can see at www.greyisgood.eu, Callanan has good form for obsessive projects, such as taking 2,000 photographs of floors in important buildings with restricted public access .

‘The Fundamental Units’ reminded me of a similarly-sourced but psychologically contrasting series : Moyra Davey’s late 80s series of 100 ‘Copperheads’, which concentrate on one coin – the US one cent – to show the range of scratching, rusting and tarnishing inflicted on the most famous American. These, focusing on one national economy at a time of recession – and currently on display at Tate Liverpool during the next recession – become harder to read as the damage tends towards abstraction. But then, isn’t the whole convention of money an abstraction of sorts?

Originally posted on FAD

Open Cube, White Cube – Evening Standard exhibition review

Evening Standard

Curator Adriano Pedrosa pulls off a neat balance with this open submission show: the works feel raw but undaunted in these august surroundings.

Critic Rating 4 star.

Open submission shows can be sprawling affairs, so Open Cube is a rarity: Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa has culled 17 artists from 2,900 applications to create an enjoyable and coherent show. Part of its novelty lies in subverting its setting. White Cube is usually an elite stage where works fetch thousands of pounds. But Pedrosa has invited gatecrashers, most young and based in London, to take over.

Building site detritus: Adriano Amaral’s untitled column (2013)

This mischievous frisson would count for little if the work didn’t stand up to the grand galleries but it does. Upstairs there’s a sense of protest and of economic and cultural decay through Adriano Amaral’s classical column made from building-site detritus, and Nada Prlja’s reconstruction of a graffitied edifice she created in Berlin last year. Downstairs, abstraction reigns, with beautiful echoes between the works’ geometric forms and a homespun modesty in their materials. Caitlin Yardley combines textiles like an Amish quilt with rigid metal frames, while Nuno Dereitinho’s humble table and mirror are transformed into a playful illusion, seeming to hover over the floor.

Pedrosa pulls off a neat balance: the works feel raw but undaunted in these august surroundings.

Ben Luke, London Evening Standard 24 July 2013
http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/exhibitions/open-cube-white-cube–exhibition-review-8729546.html

Fundamental Units at White Cube Mason’s Yard, 12 July – 21 September 2013

White Cube Mason's Yard

São Paulo-based curator Adriano Pedrosa curates an attempt to “infiltrate the hierarchies of the gallery system” by inviting any interested artists to submit works through an open submission process involving an interview and selection system that closed in February 2013. Featured artists include Slade graduate Martin John Callanan and Camberwell graduate Venisha Francis-Hickson.

Open Cube, White Cube Mason’s Yard, 12 July – 21 September 2013

Open Cube, White Cube, Mason's Yard alt="Open Cube, White Cube, Mason's Yard"

Download the press release (PDF)
Download gallery information guide (PDF)
Watch Adriano Pedrosa talk about the exhibition
Buy the catalogue

White Cube Mason’s Yard is pleased to present ‘Open Cube’, an international group exhibition organised by São Paulo-based curator Adriano Pedrosa. Invited by the gallery to curate an exhibition, Pedrosa launched a process of open submission via Art Agenda in January 2013, under the title ‘Call for entries: ‘Open Cube’ at White Cube Mason’s Yard’. The only requirement was that the artist needed to be available for an interview in London with the curator, in March 2013. ‘Open Cube’ received over 2,900 applicants, of which Pedrosa interviewed 38 and selected a final group of 17 artists.

Taking his cue from Brian O’Doherty’s seminal book Inside the White Cube, the Ideology of the Gallery Space (1976), Pedrosa’s exhibition challenges the identity of White Cube as an organisation, as a physical space and as a concept, questioning the complex relationships between existent notions of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, value and economics. By opening up the curatorial selection process beyond his own networks and meeting with artists who were previously unknown to him, Pedrosa confronts what he perceives to be the standard gallery practice of seemingly closed systems that exist in the criteria for staging exhibitions.

The works in the ground-floor gallery are concerned with the concept of the ‘white cube’ and the ‘open cube’ itself, of public and private spaces, as well as value and currency. The works in the lower ground-floor gallery present different forms of abstraction – constructivist and geometric and also organic, amorphous, fluid types – yet many of these run counter to traditional modernist abstract idioms. The 17 artists included in this exhibition, from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, The Netherlands, Portugal, Ireland, UK and USA, have created work that seeks, as Pedrosa says, ‘to contest these national boundaries as well as the very identity of White Cube itself.’

In the accompanying catalogue, which includes transcripts of the interviews Pedrosa conducted with the 17 selected artists, he suggests that the ‘Open Cube’ is a transparent cube and sets out to reveal what goes on behind the gallery doors. Pedrosa is himself interviewed by Pablo Leon de la Barra, in order to expose his own methods and the motivations behind this exhibition. The publication is fully illustrated and will be available in September 2013.

Open Cube Catalogue

Artists:

Matt Ager was born in 1985 in England and lives and works in London. He recently completed a residency at Skowhegan School in Maine, USA and is currently part of the postgraduate programme at the Royal Academy Schools in London. Recent exhibitions include ‘Classic Poncho’, The China Shop, Oxford (2013); ‘A Nod’, Space in Between, London (2012); ‘OVERTHIN’, Gallery Primo Alonso, London (2011) and ‘DUMBO Arts Festival’, Brooklyn, USA (2010).

Adriano Amaral was born in 1982 in Brazil and lives and works in London. He is currently studying for an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London. Recent exhibitions include ‘WIP Show’, Royal College of Art, London (2013); ‘Embaixo da Terra o Cèu de Novo’, Transversal Gallery, São Paulo (2012); ‘Solo Objects’, Arco Madrid (2012) and ‘Nova Escultura Brasileira’, Caixa Cultural, Rio de Janeiro (2011).

Frank Ammerlaan was born in 1979 in Sassenheim, The Netherlands and lives and works in London. He holds a BA in Fine Art from Gerrit Rietveld Art Academy, Amsterdam and an MFA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London (2012). Awards include the Land Securities studio award, Degree Show, Royal College of Art (2012), a residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Calasetta, Italy (2013) and the Royal Award of Painting, The Netherlands (2012). Recent exhibitions include ‘Painting without Paint’, David Risley Gallery, Copenhagen (2012); ‘Day’s End’, Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam and ‘Stereopsis’, The Drawing Room, London (2012).

Helen Barff was born in 1974 in England and lives and works in London. She holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Art and Art History from Goldsmiths College, London (1999) and an MA in Drawing from Camberwell College of Arts, London. Residencies include Greatmore Studios, Cape Town and Gasworks Gallery/The Triangle Arts Trust, London (2008).Recent exhibitions include ‘Brood’, Bend in the River, Gainsborough (2011); ‘Things from the Thames’, Bearspace, London (2005); ‘Trident Way’, Departure Gallery, London (2010). Site-specific projects include ‘Route 12:36’, South London Gallery: Artwork on bus routes 12 and 36, London (2000).

Sarah Bernhardt was born in 1989 in Canterbury, UK and lives and works in London. She received a BA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins. Recent exhibitions include ‘Co-Respondent’, Transition Gallery, London (2013) and ‘The Sand Between God’s Toes’, Pie Factory, Margate (2012).

Martin John Callanan was born in 1982 in the UK and lives and works in London. He holds an MFA from The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London (2005) and is currently a Teaching Fellow in Fine Art Media at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. Recent exhibitions include ‘Along Some Sympathetic Lines’, Or Gallery, Berlin (2013); Whitstable Biennale (2012); Horrach Moya Gallery, Palma (2012) and ‘Deed Poll’, a performance at Whitechapel Gallery, London (2012).

Nuno Direitinho was born in 1981 in Portugal and lives and works in London. He holds a BA in Fine Art Photography from the Glasgow School of Art (2011) and is currently doing his MFA in Fine Art Media at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. Recent exhibitions include ‘Voies Off’, La Galerie a Ciel Ouvert, Arles, France (2012); ‘Emergents DST’, Teatro Circo de Braga, Portugal (2011) and ‘3+1’, Assembly Gallery, Glasgow (2011).

Venisha Francis-Hinkson was born in 1989 in England and lives and works in London. She holds a BTEC National Diploma in Art and Design from St. Francis Xavier College (2009) and a BA (Hons) in Drawing from Camberwell College of Arts (2012). Recent exhibitions include ‘Future Map 12’, CSM Lethaby & Window Galleries, London (2013); The Learning Resource Centre, Camberwell College of Arts (2012) and ‘Peek Show’, The Biscuit Factory, London (2011).

Rodrigo Garcia Dutra was born in 1981 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and lives and works in London. He holds an MA Fine Art from Central Saint Martin’s School of Art and Design, London (2009) and is currently studying for an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London (2014). Awards include Fundacão Bienal de São Paulo, Programa Brasil Arte Contemporanea. Recent exhibitions include ‘Notes to Self’, Royal College of Art, London (2013); ‘Outras Coisas Visiveis Sobre Papel’, Galerie Leme, São Paulo (2012); ‘Theory of a City or the Possibilities of an A4′, ISCP, New York City (2011) and ’17 Ingredients: Measures of Autonomy’, BASH Studios, London (2009).

Rowena Harris was born in 1985 in Norfolk and lives and works in London. She holds an MFA in Art Practice from Goldsmiths College, London (2010) and a BA in Fine Art from University College Falmouth, UK (2008). She is the founder and editor of a bi-annual art publication called ‘Misery Connoisseur Magazine’. Recent exhibitions include ‘Cold Compress’, Drei Gallery, Cologne (2012); ‘No More Icons’, Rod Barton Gallery, London (2012); ‘Believing in Things’, Van Horbourg Gallery, Basel (2011); ‘New Contemporaries’, ICA, London and The A Foundation, Liverpool (2010).

Alan Magee was born in 1979 in Ireland and lives and works in London. He holds an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design. Awards include Florence Trust Studio Residency, Arts Council of Ireland and Travel and Mobility Award. Recent exhibitions include ‘Endogenous’, Maria Stenfors Gallery, London (2012); ‘Agents of change’, Studio 1.1, London (2012) and ‘Our Lives as Things’, Occupy Space, Limerick, Ireland (2011).

Fay Nicolson was born in 1984 in Derby, UK and lives and works in London. She holds a BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design, London (2006) and an MFA in Fine Art from the Royal College of Art, London (2011). Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Work with Material’, Künstlerhaus Wien, Vienna (2013) and ‘Bad Signs’, PLAZAPLAZA, London (2012). Group exhibitions include ‘A Small Hiccup’, Grand Union, Birmingham (2013); ‘Take Me Out’, Limoncello Art Projects, The London Art Fair (2013) and ‘Manifesta 8’, Murcia, Spain (2010).

Daniel de Paula was born in 1987 in Boston, USA and lives and works between Itapevi, São Paulo and Paris. Recent exhibitions and residencies include ‘Espaáos Independents ñ a alma è o segredo do Ègocioí’, Galerias Funarte de Artes Visuais, São Paulo (2013), Citè Internationale des Arts Residency, Paris (2013) and ‘Da prûxima vez eu fazia tudo diferenteí’, Pivù, São Paulo (2012).

Nada Prlja was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and lives and works in London. She holds a degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Skopje, Macedonia and an MPhil research degree from the Royal College of Art, London. Recent exhibitions include the ‘7th Berlin Biennale’ (2012); Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain (2010) and International Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana (2009). Recent public presentations include Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2013); ICA, London (2011) and Tate Britain (2009).

Nicky Teegan was born in 1987 in Ireland and lives and works in London. She holds a BA in Visual Arts Practice from IADT, Dublin (2009) and an MA in Fine art from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (2012). She is a founding member of Ormond Studios, Dublin. Recent exhibitions include ‘MA Fine Art Show 2012’, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (2012); ‘SWITCH/OVER’, Wimbledon Space, Wimbledon College of Art, London (2012) and ‘Invite or Reject’, Chicago Loop Alliance, Chicago, USA (2011).

Jacopo Trabona was born in 1989 in Italy and lives and works in London. He graduates this year with an MA from Chelsea College of Art, London. Recent exhibitions include RIVAlutACTION, Riva Lofts, Florence (2012); ‘B x H x Me’, A + A Gallery, Venice (2012); ’95 Young Talents Collective’, Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, Venice (2011) and Cava delle Rosselle, Grosseto, Italy (2011).

Caitlin Yardley was born in 1984 in Australia and lives and works in London. She received an MA from Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia (2007) and an MFA from Goldsmiths, University London (2012). Recent exhibitions include ‘Changing direction after entering at an angle’, Goldsmiths, University of London (2012); ‘Peripheral Orbit’, Acme, International Residency Studio, London and ‘An Intimate Distance’, Venn Gallery Project Space, Perth, Australia (2011).

Curator:

Adriano Pedrosa is an independent curator, editor and writer currently based in São Paulo. He has curated numerous international exhibitions and was adjunct curator of the 24th Bienal de São Paulo (1998) with chief curator Paulo Herkenhoff, co-curator of the 27th Bienal de São Paulo (2006) with chief curator Lisette Lagnado and co-curator of the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011) with Jens Hoffmann. He has published extensively on contemporary art in numerous catalogues and magazines and is the founding director of PIESP-Programa Independente da Escola São Paulo.

Negocios: Monedas al microscopio

intereconomia

El artista de Birmingham (Reino Unido), Martin John Callanan es un artista conceptual cuyo último trabajo, “The Fundamental Units” (Las Unidades Fundamentales) ha llevado las monedas de menor valor de cada divisa al microscopio para fotografiarlas.

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