Gina Folly

Between home, body + psyche: Alpina Huus exhibition, performance festival + scientific symposium, Dec 16 -Jan 14

15 December 2017

The Alpina Huus project at Geneva’s Le Commun and Lausanne’s Arsenic begins December 16 and is running to January 14, 2018.

The “thinking performance and domestic space” will host two festivals; an opening one at Le Commun running December 16 and 17, and a closing one at Arsenic on January 13, an exhibition at Le Commun running December 16 to January 12, and a scientific symposium at Le Commun on January 12.

Curated by Elise Lammer and Denis Pernet, the project was first initiated in March 2015 at Berlin’s Schinkel Pavillon and explores the “many analogies between the house, and the body and psyche.” This event features over 30 participants including BonaventureGina Folly, Lou Forster, Balz IslerHanne LippardGarrett NelsonRamaya Tegegne and many more.

Visit the FB event page for details.**

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Desire and obsession in How far to open up? at Forum Stadtpark Feb 17

14 February 2017

The How far to open up? group exhibition is on at Graz’s Forum Stadtpark, opening February 17 and running to February 25. 

Organised by Florentine Muhry and Cathrin Mayer, the show features works by over 20 artists, including Gina Folly, Hanne LippardPhilipp Timischl, Michaela Schweighofer, Fabian LeitgebSamantha Bohatsch and Rosa Rendl, among others. The opening night will host performances by Alizee Lenox, Anna Barfuss, Barbara Kapusta and Battle-ax.

Accompanying the event is a text by Muhry who analyses the “longing, desire, obsession, and the projections resulting therefrom” that make up the basis of the exhibition. Looking at ephemerality, vulnerability and intimacy, the artists explore what it is to yearn, both physically, as an act of production, and mentally.

See the Forum Stadtpark website for details.**

Philipp Timischl, 2, (2016). Courtesy the artist and Vilma Gold

 

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Gina Folly, Domestic Problems (2016) exhibition photos

16 November 2016

Gina Folly presented solo exhibition Domestic Problems at London’s Almanac, which ran from October 2 until November 5, 2016.

Gina Folly, Pleasures and Terrors (Jeremy) (2016). Installation view. Images courtesy of the Artist and Almanac, London
Gina Folly, ‘Pleasures and Terrors (Jeremy)’ (2016). Installation view. Courtesy the artist + Almanac, London.

The Basel-based artist’s first solo show in the UK explored the boundary between interior and exterior, beginning in the courtyard outside the gallery where a glass work hung at the entrance to the space. The exhibition continued past a SAD bulb hung in the stairwell to the main body of the show. It comprised two series of video works, ‘Pleasures and Terrors’, which were fitted around the architecture of the space and ‘Conditions’, where Folly created scans of her hands on a series of mattresses that lay propped around the gallery:

“A forced intimacy informs the ambiguities and frictions that establish the space in which a subject is formed. Stretched, shattered body traces rest on their own. Broken images lie drained – marked by a quest for comfort.”**

Gina Folly’ solo exhibition Domestic Problems was on at London’s Almanac, running October 2 to November 5, 2016.

Header image: Gina Folly, Domestic Problems (2016). Installation view. Courtesy the artist + Almanac, London.

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ON-SCREEN AND OFF @ Bid Project, Mar 25 – Apr 30

24 March 2016

There is little information on what the show will entail, down the media it will feature but hte collection of artists set to show is an impressive one, including Tilman Hornig, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Nicolas Pelzer and Sung Tieu.

Curator de Chirico, meanwhile was responsible for Antoine Donzeaud and Micah Hesse’s collaborative exhibition Needless to say I have some unusual in November last year, as well as well as the What is a bird? group exhibition in Bucharest in July.

Other artists listed as part of the ON-SCREEN AND OFF event include Pakui Hardware, B.B  5000, Gina Folly, Michele Gabriele and Yannick Val Gesto.

See the Bid Project website for (limited) details.**

Tilman Hornig @ C R A S H (2015). Install view. Photo by Stefan Haehnel. Courtesy New Scenario.
Tilman Hornig @ C R A S H (2015). Install view. Photo by Stefan Haehnel. Courtesy New Scenario.

Header image: B.B. 5000 | ℋy℘erℜruⅈn @ Davide Gallo (2015).

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Natural Instincts @ Espace Arlaud, Dec 4 -18

4 December 2015

The Natural Instincts group exhibition is on at Lausanne, Switzerland’s Espace Arlaud, opening December 4 and running to 18.

Featuring a number of artists including Andrea CrespoTarik Hayward, Rodrigo HernándezJan Kiefer and Megan Rooney the exhibition focusses on artists growing up with the internet and its affects, adverse or otherwise, on our so-called ‘natural instincts’. As society and political systems seemingly collapse under the weight of a human-technology tension, the show’s theme actively and provocatively affirms “hyper-subjective artisanal practices” that apply to making the body “felt again, to bring the figure close to the object, and to bring the artist closer to his work”

Other artists taking part include Daniel Keller & Ella Plevin,  Magnus Andersen, Mathis GasserCarla Filipe, Gina FollyChristopher Kline, Lydia Ourahmane and Athena Papadopoulos.

See the FB event page 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, Berlin.
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Cookie Gate @ Ellis King (2015) exhibition photos

20 November 2015

Cookie Gate happened in Dublin’s Ellis King in July 2015 during a period in our making history where all information around an art work or its object is attached so loudly to it – where words around art are as redundant as they are needed. The work by the 32 artists, including Thea Govorchin, boychild and Kari Altmann addressed the moment of communication between art work and audience.  By thinking about the structures of desire inherent in looking at adverts (and Facebook art show press releases, for example) the show, which ran 10 July – 15 August, aimed to dissect what the press release referred to as the ‘pre-engagement’ part of expression. Do artists second-guess what to make for an audience? Is this a passive movement between consumption and outwards communication or is it transparent? If it is transparent is this because its ‘about’ giving in to desire and working with this also as a mode of identity making as an artist? What are the materials and material objects that get caught up in all of this? Maybe you just want a cookie, and another, and another.

Cookie Gate (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy the gallery Ellis King, Dublin.
Cookie Gate (2015) Exhibition view. Courtesy the gallery Ellis King, Dublin.

The press release reads: “Corporations, brand names, and images become rituals, obsessions, and diversions. Consumption is made all but too easy”.

Amalia Ulman showed ‘Safety Net’ (2014) out of turquoise thongs attached together and spread across a garage door. The work is a weak safety net and possibly acts a little bit like desire does. Another piece that holds form and shape with tension was Dublin-based Fiona Hallinan’s ‘Pendants’ (2015). These are a group of necklaces made from objects the artist found while walking around and are pinned to the wall beautifully in diamond forms, as though on display in a jewellers with a black matte background and well lit. Gina Folly’s ‘Life’ (2014) and ‘Untitled (2015) are two tiny wax ears resting on the surface of a pillow, half-embedded; half-listening out. One ear was made last year and the other this year. You are slowly hearing and consuming more (everything) -that is all you are doing in Folly’s piece. Kari Altmann presents what looks like a portrait and upright miniature trampoline called ’Stretch, Flex and Extend’ (2015). Attached to the silver frame by bungees is an image of a cream or some pills with the word ‘extend’ on the front and a plant coming out of the top, shrouded in a cloud of mystic visible pink aroma. Altman’s piece is transparent. 

Amalia Ulman, 'Untitled (Safety Net)' (2014) Install view. Courtesy the gallery Ellis King, Dublin.
Amalia Ulman, ‘Untitled (Safety Net)’ (2014) Install view. Courtesy the gallery Ellis King, Dublin.

There are two works with faces with wide smiles and white teeth with braces. One is ‘Rigged V1’ (2015) by Auto-Italia‘s Kate Cooper and displays all at once an open mouth, a grimacing mouth that can’t talk for its braces and bridges, and an example or perhaps an offering of dental perfection.   

boychild’s ‘Patrick’ (unbound)’ and ‘wu (threshold)’ (both 2015) look like x-rays or an image that is trying to come through. They are haunting and minimal and un-clear. They are possibly the works that communicate the most about outwards communication:

“Sometimes we go shopping for bare necessities and sometimes we are looking for something to really really satisfy us”. **

Exhibition photos, top right.

 The Cookie Gate group exhibitino was on at Dublin’s Ellis King, running July 10 to August 15, 2015.

Header image: Adriana Minoliti, ‘Sexy’ (2015), courtesy the gallery, Ellis King, Dublin

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