EXHIBITION & RESIDENCY
COALESCENCE:
[ noun ] The act of joining together to form a larger mass or number.
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Exhibition & Residency co-curated by SCANDALE Project & Ultrastudio at MAH MUSEUM – TERCEIRA ISLAND, AZORES
/ SCANDALE PROJECT : Ewa Doroszenko, Plasticity, João Paulo Serafim, Bahar Yürükoglu.
/ ULTRASTUDIO : Lila De Magalhaes, Lucia Leuci, Daniel Van Straalen.
Re_act Contemporary Art Laboratory 2018 Edition – Azores Islands – 15 – 30 Sept Commissioned By DRAC Azores
EXHIBITION VIEW
EXHIBITION TEXT
Coalescence recalls an invitation to create a dialogue in between two different identities. On one hand, the online platform SCANDALE Project, and on the other, the artist run space ULTRASTUDIO. Both curatorial team are invited to select and connect artists for the Re_Act 2018 residency, to curate a two-in one exhibition. Foreseen as a matrix, the Azores Archipelago tends to the creative and the curatorial emulsion while also, being an artwork itself. Therefore, the wild scenario of the residency is an empowering laboratory offering a context to artists and curators. This residency stands for the exploration of the artificial and the organic experiences in a dialogue shaping this coalescence.
EVERYBODY WANTS TO FIND A PINK ISLAND
“Everybody wants to find a pink island” embodies our scenario, in the context of the Azores Archipelago which become the scenery, the quest and the search of an inner paradise through the landscape exuberance. The technological environment of today’s era pushes the boundaries and the need for intense experience, where devices and internet blur the possible limits in between reality and virtuality. We ask, what remains from the landscape experience ?
The event is no longer the landscape but its experience. As described by Jean Baudrillard the experience is already transformed into hyperreality, flirting with the simulacrum of concreteness. Hyperreality mixes the real with the imagination, therefore virtuality instantaneously submerges itself into reality. The landscape’s virtual existence becomes part of a key-word browsing history pretending to be authentic. However, the landscape is as real as simulated, irresistibly virtual yet frozen into reality.
In this exhibition, the Azores archipelago embodies the concept of heterotopia defined by Michel Foucault, a physical space where utopias come to life. This concept layers multiple territories in a localised space which normally wouldn’t co-exist. This otherworldliness, more real, more virtual, core of the experience where the landscape overflows onto the infinite Atlantic. Thus, the scenery invites the contemplation of heterotopia in the age of internet, devices, app and filters directly covering reality. Suddenly virtuality turns reality and heterotopia becomes this other space, dematerialized and paradoxically still anchored in realness.
Each work investigates the experience of the landscape through various approaches. Ewa Doroszenko’s textile work isolates the image, enhancing a digital abstraction. Bahar Yürükolgu contrasts an algorithmic vision of this consumerism era on video; and delivers her printed perception of the landscape by mixing the organic and artificial feeling. João Paulo Serafim dematerializes the natural history’s display as part of his ongoing research. Plasticity function as a research tool aiming to understand and gravitate around the condition of the contemporary human habitat.
EXHIBITION MAP & TEXT
ARTWORK & ARTIST’S DOCUMENTATION
Ewa Doroszenko
Born in 1983. Based in Warsaw, PL.
Ewa Doroszenko’s floating fabric decontextualizes the image from her personal online browsing experience. The print collects data which translate the artist’s graphical generated language and representation of the landscape. Artificial oceanic and sky like fragments collides into a multilayered environment.
/ Ewa Doroszenko – Select your natural landscape. Print on polyester fabric. 250 x 100 cm
Plasticity
https://plasticity-studio.tumblr.com/
Created in 2017. Based in Milan, IT.
Questioning humans and nature co-evolving in ways that are not under control, while approaching the problematic of mankind domestication over environment. This installation address the notion that humans are part of nature. However their print is undeniably stronger than other organisms. The raw volcanic stones, witness of the islands natural history express a conflictual and ambiguous relation with the human’s global aesthetics conditioned by western’s ergonomics standards.
/ Plasticity – A butterfly kiss of geological time. Volcanic stones, Steel chains, Orthopedic pillow, Engraved aluminum, Towel rack. Variable dimensions
João Paulo Serafim
Born in 1974. Based in Lisbon, PT.
João Paulo Serafim orchestrates the natural history to offer a dematerialized version of the display. The installation reconsiders the paradigma of the natural and the artificial. In an attempt to contrast the gravity effect of the island and the continent around the omnipresent Monte Brasil, João Paulo Serafim stages the museum as an heterotopia, out of space and temporality acting as a scenario. This composition is part of the artist’s ongoing research.
/ João Paulo Serafim – The Atlantic between. Ink Jet Print on Paper & Vinyle, Video on Tv. Variable dimensions
Bahar Yürükoglu
Born in 1981. Based in Istanbul, TU.
Bahar Yürüokoglu’s video investigates the reality of the landscape through internet’s spectrum. Using tools like Google and Amazon her work illustrates how key-words expose the online commodification of the Azores. Bahar Yürüokoglu reinterprets the landscape photography by including temporary man made creation in the environment, reproducing the experience through her own visual spectrum.
/ Bahar Yürükoglu – Don’t Worry, Don’t Worry, Don’t Think. Animation, Mannequin Hands. 9’53’’
/ Bahar Yürükoglu – Fourth Millennium. Ink Jet Print. 68 x 104 cm
Lila De Magalhaes
Born in 1986. Based in Los Angeles, CA.
Repurposing the context of the exhibition space as the previous convent’s kitchen, Lila De Magalhaes created her own cake even if out of place. Conceived from building material as her own architecture this chaotic cake abolishes the hierarchy in between species to awake creatures of the world. The cake incarnates the body and the circle of life, behaviour and misbehaviour in this delicious cake of Eden. Symbols get twisted, turned and turned around for an endless discovery. /
Lila De Magalhaes – Gulosa. Plastic, Foam, Steel, Fabric, Gesso, Glue, Paper, Wire, Acrylic paint. 110 x 110 cm
Lucia Leuci
Born in 1977. Based in Milan, IT.
Lucia Leuci gathers fragments encountered during her residency in the Azores. Creating a rhythm by collecting details as part of her emotional perception. Elements such as minerals, dried flowers, bones and metal produce the artist’s own miniature exhibition, taking involving baby dolls’ body. Acting as a director the artist elaborates through collaboration a scenario involving details, mise en scène, and movement over medium such as performance, installation and photography.
/ Lucia Leuci – Goddess of Azores. Resin, Synthetic hair, Metal, Fabric, Yarn, Flowers, Dried grape, Bones. 70 x 60 x 30 cm
/ Lucia Leuci – Goddess of Azores and child. Print on Paper
Daniel Van Straalen
Born in 1987. Based in The Hague, NL.
Daniel Van Straalen relates to the raincoat as a covering surface over the ancient pillars. It becomes the proof of the artist’s residency, documentation and collection towards the act of creation which surrenders to the final work. Using a gone viral image of a smiling volcano, he found his starting point. When does an eruption becomes an island, when does the viewer becomes a voyeur and when does the voyeur becomes an artist?
/ Daniel Van Straalen – Volcano cracks big smile before erupting. Ipad, Raincoat, ancient pillars, ashtray, cigarette. 5’18’’
