Future Gallery

Grand New @ Future Gallery, Feb 19 – Apr 2

19 February 2016

The Grand New group exhibition is on at Berlin’s Future Gallery, opening February 19 and running to April 2.

The gallery has recently moved from their space in Charlottenburg to a new location in Schöneberg, and is celebrating with an impressive line up of artists, including Emily Jones, Martin Kohout, Kareem Lotfy and Katja Novitskova.

There’s no additional information on the intent of the show but other artists involved include Oliver Laric, Brenna Murphy, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Jon Rafman, Anne de Vries, and Femke Herregraven, many of who are represented by or have shown with the gallery in the past.

See the Future Gallery website for (limited) details. **

Anne de Vries, THE OIL WE EAT (2014) @ Martin van Zomeren, Amsterdam. Top-bottom 'At Roquebrun' (2014) and 'Interface - Il Casolare' (2014). Courtesy the gallery.
Anne de Vries, THE OIL WE EAT (2014) @ Martin van Zomeren, Amsterdam. Top-bottom ‘At Roquebrun’ (2014) and ‘Interface – Il Casolare’ (2014). Courtesy the gallery.
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Kareem Lotfy + Brenna Murphy @ Future Gallery, Oct 30 – Nov 28

28 October 2015

A new joint exhibition by Kareem Lotfy and Brenna Murphy, ParamaterChant, is on at Berlin’s Future Gallery, opening October 30 and running to November 28.

The show brings together the respective Amsterdam- and Portland-based artists who interrogate the relationship between digital practices and spaces alongside other pre-digital forms of material cultures.

For Lotfy this includes drawing on the cultural and aesthetic history of his Egyptian heritage, while Murphy designs works situated at unique intersections of the virtual and the material. For both, hybridity is a productive terrain.

See the Facebook event page  or the Future Gallery exhibition page for details **

Kareem Lotfy, 'Navajo Rug' (2014). Install shot at 'Never cargo terminal...' (2014) @ Smart Objects. Courtesy the gallery.
Kareem Lotfy, ‘Navajo Rug’ (2014). Install shot at Never cargo terminal… (2014) @ Smart Objects. Courtesy the gallery.
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Sunday Art Fair @ Ambika P3, Oct 14 – 18

13 October 2015

Running alongside the bigger Frieze is the smaller Sunday Art Fair, taking over London’s Ambika P3, at the University of Westminster from October 14 to October 18.

The annual contemporary art fair celebrates its sixth edition this year with 25 international galleries exhibition solo or curated presentations, along with four major UK institutions displaying artist editions in a new section of the fair.

Some of exhibitors include Brussels’ Levy Delval with a Hayal Pozanti and Yannick Val Gesto show and NYC’s Hester and Tomorrow with a group show featuring Andrea Crespo, Louisa Gagliardi, Daniele Milvio, and Brad Troemel, as well as Berlin’s Future Gallery, London’s Seventeen, Paris’ Galerie Joseph Tang and more.

See the Sunday Art Fair website for details. **

Andrea Crespo, sis- somatic system (2015). Exhibition view. Image courtesy Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler.
Andrea Crespo, sis- somatic system (2015). Exhibition view. Image courtesy Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler.

Header image: Kate Cooper, ‘Experiments in Absorption’ (2015).

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Berlin Art Week, Sep 15 – 20

14 September 2015

The fourth Berlin Art Week is taking over the German city this week, running from September 15 to September 20 at various locations throughout Berlin.

Like every year, the city explodes with art, with the abc art berlin contemporary and Positions Berlin art fairs both opening on Thursday, as well as over 20 institutional exhibitions, project spaces and private collections, and a stacked lineup of ceremonies, gallery nights, performances, talks and screenings.

The opening night brings the three different exhibitions with Redemption Jokes at nGbKIch kenne kein Weekend. The Archive and Collection of René Block at n.b.k., and the reception for Paul McCarthy‘s latest exhibition at Schinkel Pavillon. Other highlights include:

— 1 LUNATIC 1 ICE PICK with Clémence de La Tour du Pin and Antoine Renard at L’Atelier-ksr

— The openings of Carla Scott Fullerton’s If these walls had ears and Tyra Tingleff’s I gave the postman your name at Chert

— Tilman Hornig’s Looki Looki at abc art berlin contemporary art fair.

Molly Nilsson‘s live show at Berghain’s Panorama

— Aaron Graham and Bryan Morello with Send Cycle at Neumeister Bar-Am, with an installation by Cécile B. Evans and Yuri Pattison.

— Matt Goerzen with Low Floor, No Ceiling at Future Gallery

— Slavs and Tatars with Dschinn and Dschuice at Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler

— Hito Steyerl with her first solo exhibition at KOW

— The Abjects group show at Import Projects

Berlin Community Radio‘s Club of the Month

See the Berlin Art Week website for details. **

csm_Amit-Epstein_03_b16955a82c copy

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Jon Rafman + Christian Jankowski @ Future Gallery reviewed

6 June 2015

Known for taking his audience to the darker corners of the internet, Jon Rafman unites with Christian Jankowski‘s interactive performances for Field Vision, running at Berlin’s Future Gallery from May 1 to June 13. The result is a series of travel experiences, where the focus is on the less dominant senses in an attempt to construct the surroundings of full-time web browsers based on photos from feed aggregator sites.

Shot entirely in black and white The Eye of Dubai’ (2012) is the documentation of Jankowski’s first trip to the United Arab Emirates. Denying himself the privilege of sight, Jankowski and his film crew experience the entire journey blindfolded. Along with entertaining shots of the crew’s misfortune, the travelogue is stunningly visual. The architectural extremes of the region are shown, along with long nature shots that include one of Jankowski handling a falcon in the desert. A crew from BBC World News followed the process of producing the project, with one episode from the collaboration accompanying the film screened in the gallery’s hallway.

Jon Rafman, Field Vision (2015). Photo by Matthias Kolb. Courtesy Future Gallery, Berlin.

A pile of blindfolds lies on the floor of the main space. Above them hang large-scale photos sharing the title ‘The Eye of Dubai’ with Jankowski’s video and capturing amusing moments alongside the stunning surroundings. Rafman’s ‘YASIAOF (Chinese Medicine)’ (2015) and ‘YASIAOF (Woodsman)’ (2015) archival pigment prints are in the gallery’s main and left room. Printed on alu dibond and painted with dripping resin both images present a keyboard in the foreground covered in a distracting amount of trash. It’s a remake of similar images found on the web, accompanied by an oil paintings of a sunset over an Arcadian landscape.

A small boxlike enclosure called ‘Cubby’ (2015) after the children’s playset is one of two of Rafman’s DIY inspirited installations. Consisting of a mattress and a wooden box covered in pastel green-coloured PU chip foam, it acts as a home cinema allowing the viewer to lie back while watching a video custom-made for these surroundings. The film takes up almost the entire space of the inner room.

Jon Rafman, 'Cabinet' (2015).  Photo by Matthias Kolb. Courtesy Future Gallery, Berlin.
Jon Rafman, ‘Cabinet’ (2015). Photo by Matthias Kolb. Courtesy Future Gallery, Berlin.

The accompanying ‘Cabinet’ (2015) installation is another box-like structure made of the similarly crude materials as of ‘Cubby’, accessible through a door in the back. One person at a time can sit in a wooden seat with high sides and watch a video projected on one side.

‘Erysichthon’ (2015) screens in the small space an consists of photos from various feed aggregator sites, along with shots that seem taken from some kind of data storage. Often a hand holding a smartphone appears and is used as the video’s second screen, demonstrating the way many people browse the web in the belief that they are multi-tasking. That idea fits well with the video’s title, named after a cursed character in Greek mythology, who no matter how much he ate was never satisfied, eventually eating himself in hunger. **

See more exhibition photos on the Future Gallery website.

Jon Rafman + Christian Jankowski’s ‘Field Vision’ is on at Berlin’s Future Gallery, running May 1 to June 13, 2015.

Header image: Jon Rafman, ‘Erysichthon’ (2015). Video still. Photo by Matthias Kolb. Courtesy Future Gallery, Berlin. 

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Jaakko Pallasvuo @ Future Gallery, Jan 24 – Feb 21

21 January 2015

Artist Jaakko Pallasvuo is bringing his third and latest solo show, Off-Game, to Future Gallery, where it will run from January 24 until February 21.

The Finnish artist presents a multi-media exhibition that, judging from the abstract press release, spans everything from: his video work ‘EU‘ (a meditation on the internet and collective consciousness in which everyone but the Finnish performance group Vibes is infected with a cyber plague taking over the world); a live-action roleplaying game involving flour and a group of terminally ill cancer patients à la Nordic Larp; Pallasvuo’s ceramic “energy” work with Vibes; his meditation on Wojciech Kosma’s communal performance art practice; and, finally, his self-interview as a “way out of endless self-reflection”. 

See the exhibition FB page for details. **

off

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Events + exhibitions, Jan 19 – 25

21 January 2015

Following a big first wave of events and exhibitions last week, there are still more to come, alongside London Art Fair this week. Those include Amitai Romm at V4ULT in Berlin, as well as a music event, hosted by producer Jacques Gaspard Biberkopf and featuring live and streamed DJ sets at Panke.

Exhibitions opening in the German city include one by Jaakko Pallasvuo at Future Gallery and Nicolas Ceccaldi at Mathew Gallery, while in London Monira Al Qadiri curates Jaykar: The Cheeky Video Scene of the Gulf to close the Never Never Land exhibition at EOA.Projects. Kim Asendorf and Ole Fach are showing at Carroll/Fletcher, with an opening performance by Helen Benigson, and Phoebe Collings-James has a solo exhibition at Italian Institute of Culture.

Elsewhere, Harm van den Dorpel, Keith J. Varadi and Cally Spooner have exhibitions across LA, New York and Milan, respectively, and Queer Thoughts has organised a group exhibition across three different locations in Nicaragua.

There’s more so see below:

EVENTS

London Art Fair, Jan 21 – 25

Rotherhithe Free Shop, Jan 21

Rainbow by Queer Thoughts, Jan 22

Amitai Romm @ V4ULT, Jan 22

Dance Café January Sail, Jan 23

Till the Stars Turn Cold @ GSS Glasgow, Jan 23

Unthinkable @ Panke Berlin, Jan 23

Jaykar: The Cheeky Video Scene of the Gulf @ EOA.Projects, Jan 23

BIRTHDA5E @ China Chalet, Jan 24

Running up that Building and Diving into the Pool @ Scena Productions, Jan 24

OPENINGS

Phoebe Collings-James @ Italian Cultural Institute, Jan 19 – Feb 1

Cally Spooner @ ZERO, Jan 20 – Feb 31

Kim Asendorf + Ole Fach @ Carroll/Fletcher, Jan 22- Feb 21

M/Other Tongue @ Tenderpixel, Jan 22 – Feb 28

New Drawings @ Lely Delval, Jan 22 – Mar 7

Nicolas Ceccaldi @ Mathew Gallery, Jan 22 – Feb 28

Caroline Mesquita @ Union Pacific, Jan 22 – Feb 20

Harm van den Dorpel @ Young Projects, Jan 23 – TBA

Hybrid Poplar Trees @ Fat Relic, Jan 23 – Feb 1

I Am What You Call The Perfect Couple @ Belle Air, Jan 24 – Feb 11

MY INTERNET WAS DOWN FOR 5 MINUTES… @ Galerie Jean Rochdard, Jan 24 – Feb 21

Jaakko Pallasvuo @ Future Gallery, Jan 24 – Feb 21

Jamie Zigelbaum @ Transfer Gallery, Jan 24

Keith J. Varadi @ Retrospective, Jan 24 – Mar 1

 **

See here  for exhibitions opening last week.

Header image: Jaykar: The Cheeky Video Scene of the Gulf @ EOA.Projects.

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End of Year events + exhibition openings (November)

27 November 2014

With the end of year wind-up comes the last surge of final shows to finish off November and December, so in an effort to give space to upcoming events that spill out of the schedule, we’ve rounded up show openings and events in the week ending November and leading to the New Year.

Beginning November 23 is Aimee Heinemann‘s second residential exhibition, Instableat Grove House, as well as the Holly Childs-curated Quake II two-person show at Arcadia Missa, as well as Arca + Jesse Kanda performing an audiovisual collaboration at the ICA, as well as a group exhibition at EOA. Projects that includes a new light box installation by Monira Al Qadiri.

There’s also Spiros Hadjidjanos‘ solo exhibition, Pre-digital Space at Future Gallery in Berlin, AirBNB Pavilion, including work by Maja Cule and Rosa Aiello in Italy’s Bari, the Panda Sex group show, with Andreas Angelidakis and others, plus more.

Here’s a list below and we’ve definitely missed loads but #nofomo.

EVENTS

Arca + Jesse Kanda @ ICA, November 27

Harry Burke + Eloise Bonnevïot @ tank.tv, November 27

Objective Considerations @ MOT Projects, November 27

#quoax Twitter event by HOAX Publication (online), November 27

The Free Sea screening and discussion @ GV art, November 28

Networked Voices @ Dana Centre, November 29

WORDS END YEAR @ SLOPES Projects, November 29

CASTILLO/CORRALES 3rd Annual Benefit Raffle, November 29


OPENING

Got Tortilla with Butter on Phone. Think it’s the End? @ Rod Barton, November 28 to January 17

Quake II @ Arcadia Missa, November 28 to December 12

Candice Jacobs @ DKUK Salon, November  28 to December 24

Panda Sex @ State Of Concept, November 28 to January 17

Never Never Land @ EOA. Projects, November 28 to January 31

Spiros Hadjidjanos @ Future Gallery, November 29 to January 10

Aimee Heinemann @ Grove House, November 30


NOW ON

Future Polities @ Auto Italia, November 24 to January 5

Emily Jones @ Jupiter Woods, November 23 to 30

Alternative Equinox @ French Riviera, November 25 to 30

AirBNB Pavilion @  63rd-77th STEPS, November 27 to December 15

He He He He He … @ MilMa, November 27 to December 21

biotic / abiotic @ The Gallery Apart, November 26 to January 24

Pipolitti Rist @ Hauser & Wirth November 26 to January 10 **

Header image: Marian Tubbstypical quasi-coy, digital print on silk (2014). Image courtesy Arcadia Missa.

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Berlin Art Week, Sep 16 – 21

15 September 2014

Berlin Art Week is returning to the German capital for its third year, running at various galleries, museums and contemporary art spaces throughout the city from September 16 to 21.

Like in its previous two installments, art fairs abc – art berlin contemporary and Positions Berlin are joining forces with some of Berlin’s most prominent art institutions (including Berlinische Galerie, C/O Berlin and the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) to create a rich six-day program, packed with exhibitions, lectures, performances, and screenings, as well as the international conference Artfi The Fine Art & Finance Conference running in Berlin for the first time.

This year, artist Marguerite Humeau‘s futuristic sound and sculpture installations are taking over Import Projects, Ernst Schering Foundation Art Award winner and director of London’s Auto Italia Kate Cooper and artist Ryan Trecartin are presenting their respective exhibitions at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, and Archive Kabinett is “tracing feminisms’ genealogies through its manifestos” in Manifestos Show: Act I, Inessential Fathers .

Meanwhile, the abc and Positions Berlin art fairs will run from September 18 to 21 at, respectively, the Station in Kreuzberg and the former Kaufhaus Jandorf in Mitte, together featuring 150 galleries and a variety of events, including Spiros Hadjidjanos from Future Gallery, Guan Xiao from Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Zvi Hecker from Neumeister Bar-Am, Camille Henrot from Johann König, Davis Rhodes from Société, and Yung Jake from Steve Turner Contemporary.

See the Berlin Art Week website for details. **

KC_TBC

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Nicolas Pelzer @ Future Gallery reviewed

7 July 2014

Physical absence, rather than presence, is the focus of Nicolas Pelzer’s Custom Utility, where an immaterial ‘now’ is echoed through a gradient of futuristic forms replacing the human body. As a part of Future Gallery’s impressive roster of represented artists and his second show at the Berlin space, Pelzer’s practice works across disciplines, culminating in the installation, print and sculptural works exploring the limitations and substitutions of modern reproductive materials.

Nicholas Pelzer, Custom Utility @ Future Gallery (2014) exhibition view. Photo by Hans-Georg Gaul. Image courtesy the gallery.
Nicholas Pelzer, Custom Utility (2014) exhibition view. Photo by Hans-Georg Gaul. Image courtesy Future Gallery.

Filling a large part of the gallery floor, the tall glass panels of ‘Breathe Control’ (2014) stand connected and controlling the flow and breath of its viewer on entering its maze-like physical mechanism. Other works, viewed through the glass are clearly visible but refracted and slightly blurred. Prints of stones found via Google Search, are stretched and modified and hang on a wall, presenting an altered physical presence as the smooth, gradient edges of the stones become distorted and disfigured by the borders of the square white frames that confine them.

In contrast to glass and stone, another room employs more artificial materials, where three blocks of dark grey foam –the type used to package and protect fragile precision objects –hang from the wall. They’ve been carved out with a water-jet cutter to create a defined absence that, within their new customisation and outside of their original utilitarian context, become naturally devoid of their use. Similar to George Henry Longly’s marble tablets, presented during last year’s Frieze week fringe events in London, known and unknown objects create abstract compositions in the light grey material. Some of the cut-away outlines are easily recognisable, where there are screw driver and crowbar forms mixed with more organic shapes. The series title, Muscle Remainder (2014), conjures the physical exertion and labour that a tool both requires and produces in contrast with the machine-controlled cut outs of the piece.

1Nicholas Pelzer, Custom Utility @ Future Gallery (2014). Exhibition view. Photo by Hans-Georg Gaul. Image courtesy the gallery.
Nicholas Pelzer, Custom Utility (2014) exhibition view. Photo by Hans-Georg Gaul. Image courtesy Future Gallery.

Physical absence is echoed in the installation ‘Orthopedic Reconstructions’ (2014) situated in the middle of the space. A series of orthopaedic pillows are presented on a long, low base. Silhouettes of tools and related objects are stenciled on the blue sprayed-painted satin covering the pillows that the Custom Utility press release describes as standing for “physical limitation, inferring the change of lifestyle and working conditions in contemporary society”. The negative space of these objects, scattered across the ergonomic shape of their pillows, hint to a physical present, at the same time as negating it completely.

All the objects in the exhibit could have been made without the human touch at all, implying our physical present as an increasingly dispersed and disappearing reality, with the future offering only more (or less) of the same.**

Exhibition photos, top-right.

Nicolas Pelzer’s Custom Utility is on at Berlin’s Future Gallery, running June 26 to July 26, 2014.

 

Header image: Nicholas Pelzer, Custom Utility (2014) exhibition view. Photo by Hans-Georg Gaul. Image courtesy Future Gallery.

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Metahaven @ Future Gallery reviewed

2 April 2014

From “transparent camouflage” to Black Transparency, Metahaven take their 2010 Wikileaks re-brand to the next level of “involuntary transparency invoked on organisations and nation-states by whistleblowers and hackers”. As the confidential file-sharing site’s official designers responsible for producing the self-censored scarves sold to raise funds –while dodging direct-donation embargoes courtesy of Visa, Paypal and MasterCard– the Amsterdam-based duo of Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden dig deeper into this geopolitical phenomenon of visibility-via-evasion.

In two-parts and across two locations – with works in Future Gallery’s new location at Keithstraße as well as their old Mansteinstraße space – the exhibition plays forerunner to its published namesake Black Transparency: The Right To Know in the Age of Mass Surveillance (out through Sternberg Press in April 2014) and explores the mercurial nature of modern activism.

Transparent Camouflage , (2011-2013): WikiLeaks scarves and t-shirts. Installation view, image courtesy Future Gallery.
Transparent Camouflage , (2011-2013): WikiLeaks scarves and t-shirts. Installation view, image courtesy Future Gallery.

Opening a week apart and first held at the Keithstraße 10 space, usually occupied by Import Projects, Black Transparency presents Metahaven’s ongoing collaboration with Conny Groenwegen, a fashion designer situating herself “where inventions in production technology define themselves into new artifacts”. In ‘Data Stitch (Prequel)’ as they call it, a flowing abstract work constructed from cotton scarves, paint and wax visually demonstrates the connection between information and fashion. Similar connections are made in the the Wikileaks series; grey t-shirts with an undulating Wikileaks logo and vibrant silk scarves, both see-through and concealing, line a wall of the gallery space. Somewhere between artwork and advertisement, the products reveal elements of the organisation’s identity while keeping others a mystery.

Across the room several videos are presented on small screens, Skype interviews with notable online activists, academics and politicians. Smári McCarthy, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Alexa O’Brian, Amelia Andersdotter and Gabrielle Coleman talk to Metahaven about their connection to Pirate Parties International or alternative software practice. The design studio also proposes a new model for data hosting, in the bedouin utopian tent to be seen through the window of Future Gallery’s old Mansteinstaße location.

'Black Transparency' interviews (2013).  Installation view, image courtesy Future Gallery.
Black Transparency interviews (2013).
Installation view, image courtesy Future Gallery.

Having worked with posters as geopolitical board games in the past, in the Berlin gallery space Metahaven present a similar activity in the form of a horizontal map of the ocean; the international water where the Anonymous cargo ship sails with its data, in search of new host: Sealand. A self-proclaimed micronation that became a free port for the internet and occupies a full chapter in Metahaven’s 2010 publication Uncorporate Identity, Metahaven were charged with designing a whole new identity for this anarchist state, in a similar way to what they did with Wikileaks. On the walls above the map, several silk flags hang announcing, “Ask me about transparency” and “Captives of the cloud”, through talking balloons and cartoon-like faces through a cryptic narrative. It asks, “Is the future of the world the future of the Internet?” without offering any concrete answers.

A video manifesto, sharing the Black Transparency title, projects images of current events across the Athens riots and contemporary popular culture. As Metahaven mentions in the press release, “black transparency is not only transparent, but also black”. It sounds like a dark forecast. But Black Transparency on the whole is not so bleak. It’s more a visually striking challenge, or a reminder that all is not what it reveals. **

Black Transparency from metahaven on Vimeo.

Metahaven’s Black Transparency exhibition is on at Berlin’s Future Gallery, running from March 20 to April 19, 2014.

Header image:  Metahaven, ‘The Good Ship Anonymous‘ (2013). Installation view, image courtesy Future Gallery.

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Brad Troemel @ Future Gallery reviewed

7 February 2014

Best known as co-founder of crowd-sourced conceptual art Tumblr The Jogging, as well as one of the weirdest Etsy stores around, artist Brad Troemel‘s The Edward Copy, 1796-2014 exhibition at Berlin’s Future Gallery is all about coins. A focus on counterfeit currencies and their ongoing relationship with US history connects this show to his recent series based on infamous “black market eBay” site Silk Road by bringing bitcoin into physical space.

A three-page press release, published alongside the exhibition on the Future Gallery website, introduces the reader to the world of coin-collecting, derived from Troemel’s own experiences and observations as both buyer of rare and historic coins and as a seller of counterfeit ones. He’d put coins into chemical baths and drive over them to make them look “old and lived”, then sell them on eBay with a fake history. Those make-believe blurbs resemble the descriptions of his older works on Etsy, where he’d present sculptures made from mass-produced and cheap objects as “irrefutably rare” or “immeasurably valuable”.

Brad Troemel. The Edward Copy, 1796-2014 install view. Image courtesy Future Gallery.
Brad Troemel. The Edward Copy, 1796-2014 install view. Image courtesy Future Gallery.

In Future Gallery, however, it’s a mix of original and counterfeit bills and coins, neatly organized and hanging in white frames on the walls of the gallery; trolley straps splitting the room into several irregular spaces, forcing the viewer to arrange their path around the exhibition. Attached to those strings are four copies of art theorist Gerald Raunig’s Factories of Knowledge, Industries of Creativity, presented as Troemel’s own on Etsy, and vacuum-packed with four keys each, one original bump key (used for lock-picking and potentially bought from Silk Road) and three coloured copies. US pennies cover the floor and are mingled with ten Chinese counterfeits that are impossible to discern.

Brad Troemel. The Edward Copy, 1796-2014 install view. Image courtesy Future Gallery.
Brad Troemel. The Edward Copy, 1796-2014 install view. Image courtesy Future Gallery.

During an artist talk held that same weekend, Troemel discussed his Tumblr side with The Jogging, the “accidental audience” it reaches and how Internet accessibility means extending its interactions beyond the art world. Not only that, but Troemel expounded on his observations on the reactions of these new viewers when stumbling upon posts from The Jogging, which they often have a hard time situating.

Such investigations can be interesting in relation to exhibitions like this one, where “non artistic” objects are exhibited and aimed at “art audiences”. They go hand-in-hand with Raunig’s recent book on the industrialisation of knowledge and creativity that Troemel included as a part of The Edward Copy, 1796-2014. They both confound ideas of value and originality, compare counterfeits to originals and ask, ‘What’s the difference anyway?’ **

Brad Troemel’s The Edward Copy, 1796-2014 is on at Berlin’s Future Gallery, running until February 28, 2013.

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Constant Dullaart @ Future Gallery reviewed

26 September 2013

Inhabiting the online and offline realms at Berlin’s Future Gallery, Jennifer in Paradise by Dutch artist Constant Dullaart is a reference to the first ever PhotoShop-ped image. A woman lying on a white beach, she has her back to the camera, black hair waving in the wind, the sky, aqua blue. The photo is of one of the ubiquitous software creator John Knoll’s girlfriend, taken and edited by him and his co-creators and points to the alteration and ultimate deformation of its subject across ‘realities’.

The online component of the exhibition, website untitledinternet.com, sees Dullaart modifying an online interface, its start page a familiar Google search engine. All the usual options are there and it works in the same way that Google does, except that the perspective has been changed. An embed of the original page is obscured by images of Dullart’s work; a brush tool erasing random areas, paint swirls obscuring the screen. Information and context is lost.

In the gallery, a large window at its entrance is complete with a YouTube play button. It’s a throwback to some of his earlier YouTube as a Subject series, inspired by the unmerited triumph of the poorly designed video hosting site over all others, its banality entering the material domain in his 2011 performance of its familiar loading circle at the Netherlands’ GOGBOT festival. Sat on the floor, eight white circles surround Dullaart, which he moves repetitively, generating a ring in endless rotation performed and then projected on a wall in the same space.

That motif continues inside, where a wall is dotted with the same ubiquitous loading sequence. Elsewhere, printed float glass work, a light-green, shimmering and transparent material, is printed with various screenshots from untitledinternet.com. Floor-standing and hanging from the walls of Future Gallery, they resemble the countless screens that surround us in our daily lives. Looking out from windows at home and in to them through screens on our devices, we use both for collecting information. That information is filtered in one way or another, as thick glass screen shots display images and text the same way a webpage does. What content we see depends on where we stand, what search engine we’re looking at and how that perspective is monitored and obscured by personal algorithms, marketing strategies and governmental regulation, among other interests.

Here, like in in earlier work, Dullaart is editing online forms of representation, materializing the immaterial, making visible the normally invisible. He does this in a clear, minimalistic, and easily approachable way. Placing himself on a high level among artists working with a post-internet focus,  Jennifer in Paradise interrogates notions of reality, its visibility and its ultimate (mis)representation. **

Constant Dullaart’s Jennifer in Paradise is on at Future Gallery, September 12- October 5, 2013.

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