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PAMELA ROSENKRANZ, Our Product
installation view at the Pavilion of Switzerland, Venice
photo by MARC ASEKHAME

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PAMELA ROSENKRANZ, Our Product
installation view at the Pavilion of Switzerland, Venice
photo by MARC ASEKHAME

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PAMELA ROSENKRANZ, Our Product
installation view at the Pavilion of Switzerland, Venice
photo by MARC ASEKHAME

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PAMELA ROSENKRANZ, Our Product
installation view at the Pavilion of Switzerland, Venice
photo by MARC ASEKHAME

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PAMELA ROSENKRANZ, Our Product
installation view at the Pavilion of Switzerland, Venice
photo by MARC ASEKHAME

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PAMELA ROSENKRANZ, Our Product
installation view at the Pavilion of Switzerland, Venice
photo by MARC ASEKHAME

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PAMELA ROSENKRANZ, Our Product
installation view at the Pavilion of Switzerland, Venice
photo by MARC ASEKHAME

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PAMELA ROSENKRANZ, Our Product
installation view at the Pavilion of Switzerland, Venice
photo by MARC ASEKHAME

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screen capture from Our Product, an e-book version of the publication, which accompanies the exhibition

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Entitled Our Product, the exhibition, created by PAMELA ROSENKRANZ for the Swiss Pavilion at this year’s 56th Art Biennale in Venice, is all about Carneam, Evoin, Gleen, Magmelia, Neoten, Rilin, Solood, Silicone, Evian, Viagra, Bionin, Necrion or Visorb among others. All these names which sound highly synthetic, correspond to substances used in everyday items like make-up, creams, medications or even food.

For Our Product, PAMELA ROSENKRANZ employed the knowledge mobilized by marketing strategies and brands who develop these substances in order to create an immersive installation with so-called organic components like light, colour, scent, sound, hormones as well as bacteria, which triggers the senses as well as the perception.

ROSENKRANZ isolates the large interior space with plastics, filling it with a monochrome liquid mass matching a standardised northern European skin-tone. This Eurocentric skin colour, reminiscent of the «carnate» used in Renaissance painting to render the visual qualities of human flesh, is employed in today’s advertising industry as a proven way to physically enhance attention. ROSENKRANZ contrasts this skin colour—the product of a natural history involving migration, exposure to the sun, and nutrition—with a verdant green coating the institutional mantle of the Swiss Pavilion. Whereas the artificial green light in the patio blurs the distinction between inside and outside, a special wall paint that is biologically attractive further dissolves the clean separation between culture and nature. Smells and sound penetrate the architecture. The synthetic sound of water, generated by an algorithm in real time, disseminates throughout the space, and a scent evoking the smell of fresh baby skin billows through the Pavilion. Invading all of our 2/3 senses, this installation appropriates immemorial aesthetic reflexes that both art and commercial culture rely on, but renders them cognitively disturbing. As in a placebo effect, it’s hard to know here whether our physiological responses are triggered by imagination alone or if the effects we’re experiencing are the hallucinatory product of our bodies and their natural/cultural histories. – press release

This tension between ‘synthetic’ and ‘natural’ is at the core of ROSENKRANZ‘s work which explores the elements, the concept of purity, the body, the emotions and other non-economic aspects of individual subject in relationship with contemporary ways of consumerism.

Our Product is on view at the Swiss Pavilion at the 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia until November 22, 2015.

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view from the exhibition Hope for the Best by NEIL BELOUFA
seen at Schinkel Pavilion, Berlin
on Saturday, May 3, 2015
image © wfw

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Halb offen mit Neon (2013-2014) by VÁCLAV POŽÁREK
seen at Francesca Pia, Zürich
on Saturday, May 9, 2015
image © wfw

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screencapture from http://distantfeel.com/

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If you are around Pittsburgh these days, make sure to catch Distant Feel, the solo exhibition of ANTOINE CATALA presented at Carnegie Museum of Art, before it closes on May 18. For this exhibition, the French artist now based in New York has created a website (http://distantfeel.com/) that explores just like the show in Pittsburgh, ‘how images provoke emotion, especially as they travel virtual and physical distances via the internet’ according to the press release.

Exhibitions that organise themselves around sociological issues are not new but the fact that CATALA collaborated with a New York advertising agency called Droga5 to develop a new approach to the sentiment of empathy, reveals how the so-called soft, emotion-oriented imagery is becoming more important economically and how the desire to create personal and social meaning beyond economic utility seems to be stronger than ever. The exhibition not only questions the way people address the relation between emotion and virtual images but also how do artists reflect the ambivalence of personal and social empathy between the two poles of authenticity and staged seduction.

If you can’t see the exhibition, a few images are available on http://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/. Please note also that ANTOINE CATALA is currently presenting a project entitled Jardin synthétique à l’isolement (Synthetic Garden to Isolation) (2014-2015) at Musee d’Art Contemporain in Lyon until July 12, 2015.

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all images courtesy the artist and and Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest

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Gatherings, a solo exhibition of PHILIPP KREMER
on view at Galeria Nicodim in Bucharest
until June 06, 2015

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chosen by curator and editor DOMENICO DE CHIRICO*

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The 56th Venice Biennale has officially started, and the feeds of social media are already flooded with images from the event. One of the pavilions that attracts my interest so far, is the one created by SIMON DENNY for New Zealand.

The title of the project, Secret Power, refers to a 1996 book by NICKY HAGER,  an investigative journalist from New Zealand, who is currently working to disseminate many of the leaks made by EDWARD SNOWDEN that implicate New Zealand in having collaborated with the US government in its spying activities.

This exhibition is split across two sites: the first venue is in the terminal area of Venice Marco Polo Airport and the second is taking place in Venice’s Marciana Library, the home of a great collection of original Renaissance maps that have been key to the development of the exhibition as well as the ‘clandestine visual world’ leaked by SNOWDEN and designed by DAVID DARCHICOURT.

The article written by CHARLOTTE HIGGINS for The Guardian (excerpt above) explains very well the complex, yet fascinating puzzle behind DENNY‘S Biennale project, make sure to read the whole story via http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/05/edward-snowden-nsa-art-venice-biennale-reverse-espionage and to visit the New Zealand’s pavilion website http://www.nzatvenice.com/#2015-project.

➝ The Biennale’s exhibitions will be open to the public from Saturday, May 9th until November 22nd, 2015 at the Giardini and the Arsenale venues in Venice.

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Please note also that The Innovator’s Dilemma – the largest US museum solo exhibition of SIMON DENNY’s work to date – is on view at MoMA PS1 till 7 September 2015.

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still from Erysichthon, (2015)
full HD video, 8:03

image: wfw

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This is a still from a new video by Canadian artist JON RAFMAN that is currently part of the exhibition Field Vision along with German artist CHRISTIAN JANKOWSKI. I saw the piece, called Erysichthon (2015), during gallery weekend in Berlin at Future Gallery which presents, through this duo exhibition, a selection of videos and images that engage the relationship between vision and comprehension as well as image and experience.

Erysichthon (2015) is a eight-minute single-channel video featuring a both fascinating and apocalyptic imagery made of appropriated footage from the web. The video is presented in a kind of DIY plywood box which isolates you completely from the gallery environment. I have read that RAFMAN was interested into the idea of ‘troll caves’, which are the rooms inhabited by gamers during excessive hours in virtual reality. For the artist these spaces are at ‘once abject and sublime, revealing the material residue of a life completely dedicated to an online existence, and they point to the impossibility of total escape from physical reality’*. This piece – as well as RAFMAN‘s previous works – seems to use the media against itself to have it be entertaining and critical at once.

A very short excerpt of the video is available on the wfw instagram. Of course, the image above and the short excerpt don’t do justice to RAFMAN‘s work, so make sure to view the exhibition in person before it closes on June 13, 2015 at Future Gallery in Berlin.

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* via artforum

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two pieces from the exhibition Cannibals by OLGA BALEMA
presented on the occasion of gallery weekend at Croy Nielsen, Berlin
seen on Saturday, May 2, 2015
image © wfw

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follow We Find Wildness on Instagram to see more photos from gallery weekend Berlin

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view from the exhibition Echoes by MARGUERITE HUMEAU
presented on the occasion of gallery weekend at DUVE, Berlin
seen on Thursday, April 30, 2015
image © wfw

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all images courtesy the artist and and Metro Pictures, New York

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NINA BEIER‘s solo exhibition
on view at Metro Pictures in New York
until May 23, 2015

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chosen by curator and editor DOMENICO DE CHIRICO*

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DAVID LIESKE, Platoon (RL-X)
exhibition view at mumok, Wien, February-June 2015
photo: mumok / LAURENT ZIEGLER

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DAVID LIESKE, Platoon (RL-X)
exhibition view at mumok, Wien, February-June 2015
photo: mumok / LAURENT ZIEGLER

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DAVID LIESKE, Platoon (RL-X)
exhibition view at mumok, Wien, February-June 2015
photo: mumok / LAURENT ZIEGLER

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DAVID LIESKE, Platoon (RL-X)
exhibition view at mumok, Wien, February-June 2015
photo: mumok / LAURENT ZIEGLER

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DAVID LIESKE, Platoon (RL-X)
exhibition view at mumok, Wien, February-June 2015
photo: mumok / LAURENT ZIEGLER

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DAVID LIESKE with ECKHAUS LATTA, Flash Art Issue 298, October 2014
photo: SEBASTIAN MAYER

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Platoon (RL-X) is the title of a solo exhibition by German artist DAVID LIESKE currently on view at Mumok in Vienna. The installation consists of an abandoned army encampment delimited by a canopy of military camouflage netting. On a closer look, LIESKE‘s camp seems to be rather a trade show booth displaying stacks of a book entitled I tried to make this work which is in fact the artist’s autobiography, a kind of ‘art war’ memoir in which he tells the story of his life in an idealized retrospective.

This exhibition as well as the book, that has been printed in an edition of 300 copies, attempt to layer LIESKE‘s concerns of artistic autonomy and social relations, of utility and language. According to the press release, the central premise of the show is the complex relationship between the artist and the work, as well as the fluid borders between life and work. Nevertheless by taking the military allegory as a starting point, one can’t help but making connections with the context of combat and the art scene that DAVID LIESKE as an artist, co-founder of a record label and gallerist knows well.

➝ Platoon (RL-X) by DAVID LIESKE is on view at Mumok in Vienna until June 14, 2015. Please note also that the Austrian premiere of DAN BODAN’s album Soft will take place on May 7 at Mumok and will be a continuation of performances associated with the network of LIESKE and his exhibition, more infos about this event here.

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Translantics – Episode 1/6: “Pores of Perception“

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Translantics is a new web series by Berlin-based artist BRITTA THIE that follows three german girls – BRITTA, ANNIKA and JULIA –  who live in Berlin and who interact with friends and acquaintances composed mostly of international expats. One of the major aspect of Translantics is the way the characters relate to each other which is very often dictated by their heavy reliance on technology. These ‘digitized’ relationships enable the artist to explore throughout the six episodes, ‘how concepts of self, emotions, and human interaction have changed under the influence of global developments in digital technology’.

The series may be a generational portrait, but the generation (‘89, plus or minus) is a generation in test-phase; the present is empty, and everyone is in between: zwischen hin und her, him and her, then and now. Resolution dials up and then dies down. Pupils dilate as center swiftly encroaches on periphery. With stories conveyed through smartphone cameras, skype windows, and contact lenses, each self-contained episode embodies its subject – form follows flux. *

From today (Tuesday, 28 April 2015) to August, the Schirn Kunsthalle of Frankfurt will feature a new episode each month exclusively online via www.schirn.de/translantics . The video above entitled Pores of Perception is the first episode of the series… anxiety at high level, welcome to Berlin !

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*source: press release

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Mud Dynasty (Fennel and Flowers) , 2015
mudjug portable spittoon, scented wax, candied fennel, wick, 10,5 x 12, 5 cm
photo : SYLVIE CHAN-LIAT

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SPENCER LONGO, an American artist living in Los Angeles, created the work Mud Dynasty (Fennel and Flowers) (2015) which is now in the group exhibition you will find me if you want me in the garden at Galerie Valentin in Paris.

Mud Dynasty (Fennel and Flowers) (2015) consists of a yellow mudjug portable spittoon, in which purple scented wax with candied fennel has been poured in. For this piece, as well as for his previous works, LONGO uses mass-marketed products as raw materials to create installations or sculptures following the witty aesthetic of The Jogging, the popular art tumblr and art collective of which SPENCER LONGO is a member .

In the group show at Galerie Valentin, every works –  from scented candles, natural motifs to a shabby concrete sculpture – reference a carefully planned garden, with a focus not on flora and fauna but rather on the constructions and framing devices through which this domesticated natural world is now experienced.

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view from the exhibition Anything by the Smiths by JONATHAN MONK
presented at CAN, Neuchâtel in 1997
photo: JOËL ALLMEN

click here for the 2015 version of this exhibition*
seen at CAN, Neuchâtel
on Wednesday, April 22, 2015

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*running through May 24, 2015

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