Unitasking (Tentatively)
08 Mar - 11 May 2014
UNITASKING (TENTATIVELY)
Eva Barto + Mattia Denisse + Helene Hellmich + Thomas Teurlai + Pauline Toyer + Ana Vaz + Veronica Wüst
8 March - 11 May 2014
Curated by: François Piron
Distribution used to be the keyword in the mass media value system. The blockbuster economy used to rely on distribution to focus all attentions on a single product. Now, in the age of the attention economy, our individual focused attention is the scarcest resource and ultimately the commodity sold to the service industry. We used to think we stood as consumers in this virtual food chain, when actually we’ve become the product. Multitasking and its consecutive attention deficit disorders have become the new doom of this era, and any pledge to focus and turn off distracting social networks providers is its injunction. Wishful thinking. The unitasker is the hero of that day. Doing one thing at a time. Then, is the artist of the late 20th century – hyperactive, self-manager, self-promoter, ubiquitous, biennalist, an outdated role model? There is more than one to think that the modern artist has pioneered these "economics of attention", and that the "art’s centre of gravity henceforth does lie not anymore in objects that artists create but in the attention that the beholder brings to them" (Richard A. Lanham, The Economics of Attention. Style and Substance in the Age of Information). Duchamp’s ready-mades, Avant-garde manifestos, Andy Warhol’s lifestyle or conceptualists’ trading of immaterial goods, have deflated the interest in the actual artwork in order to shed light on the social relationship established between the artist and the viewer. Now, in the well-oiled machine of Google AdSense and Mediabot, the engine that reads and analyses every user’s click on a computer in order to suggest contextual advertisements in real time, half the work of the creative act is definitely performed, not by the viewer as Marcel Duchamp used to think, but by software. In these great times should we still refer to art as a part of the creative field, or should we rather ban the term of creativity from the art’s vocabulary?
Unitasking (tentatively) is an exhibition of solipsistic machines, either dysfunctional or referring to an idiosyncratic order of things, which all together create the décor of the unitasking environment. Unitasking (tentatively) takes its starting point in the muteness and the stubbornness of the art practice, its capacity to be recalcitrant to the pervasive influence of the globalized creativity. The exhibition associates a series of newly produced drawings by the Lisbon-based French artist Mattia Denisse with new works by younger international artists currently residing in the post-graduate program at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. Mattia Denisse’s (*1967 Blois/F, lives in Lisbon) delicate pencil drawings often depict an impersonation of the artist in an imaginary studio, obsessively assembling complex machineries or preparing impossible journeys based on literary myths. Based on early conversations between the participant artists, while Denisse was in Brazil, these new drawings include many of the ideas and forms developed in the pieces realized for the exhibition, relocating them in a dream-like exotic environment. Brazilian artist Ana Vaz (*1986 Brasília, lives in Lyon) blasts in her video installation the myths of the origin by blending ruins of ancient sculptures with debris of digital technologies. Echoes of corporate slogans emerge as a monologue blurring the boundaries between personal discourse and advertisement. French artist Eva Barto (*1987 Nantes, lives in Lyon) considers the artwork as a spy, an almost clandestine object that mimics and discreetly invades the exhibition space. She replicates the entrance desk and turns it to a dysfunctional device, which includes a proliferation of props and a mock-up extension of the gallery’s website in which flickering pop-up screens show truncated images and fragmented information about artists’ alter-egos and surrogate personas. German artist Helene Hellmich (*1986 Wolmirstedt, lives in Lyon) accumulates in museum-like displays ranges of abstract shapes and drawings in a purposely administrated classification of things. In the exhibition she blows up a seemingly abstract chart, or calendar, onto a wall and unfolds a display of objects and furniture, all white, into the skeleton of a house. French artist Pauline Toyer’s (*1987 Blois, lives in Lyon) workbench-like table displays sand and cardboard architectures resisting their dissolution. Her constructive yet sentimental approach to sculpture is revealed through the contradictory dynamics of erection and decay. Sensorial materialism is at the core of Thomas Teurlai’s (*1988/F, lives in Lyon) practice: he altered ceiling fans in order to convert them into sound devices, producing a dull, physical sound. By adding a certain threat, and feeling of anxiety, he ironically underlines and subverts the somewhat administrative aesthetics of the exhibition. (François Piron, 2014)
Eva Barto + Mattia Denisse + Helene Hellmich + Thomas Teurlai + Pauline Toyer + Ana Vaz + Veronica Wüst
8 March - 11 May 2014
Curated by: François Piron
Distribution used to be the keyword in the mass media value system. The blockbuster economy used to rely on distribution to focus all attentions on a single product. Now, in the age of the attention economy, our individual focused attention is the scarcest resource and ultimately the commodity sold to the service industry. We used to think we stood as consumers in this virtual food chain, when actually we’ve become the product. Multitasking and its consecutive attention deficit disorders have become the new doom of this era, and any pledge to focus and turn off distracting social networks providers is its injunction. Wishful thinking. The unitasker is the hero of that day. Doing one thing at a time. Then, is the artist of the late 20th century – hyperactive, self-manager, self-promoter, ubiquitous, biennalist, an outdated role model? There is more than one to think that the modern artist has pioneered these "economics of attention", and that the "art’s centre of gravity henceforth does lie not anymore in objects that artists create but in the attention that the beholder brings to them" (Richard A. Lanham, The Economics of Attention. Style and Substance in the Age of Information). Duchamp’s ready-mades, Avant-garde manifestos, Andy Warhol’s lifestyle or conceptualists’ trading of immaterial goods, have deflated the interest in the actual artwork in order to shed light on the social relationship established between the artist and the viewer. Now, in the well-oiled machine of Google AdSense and Mediabot, the engine that reads and analyses every user’s click on a computer in order to suggest contextual advertisements in real time, half the work of the creative act is definitely performed, not by the viewer as Marcel Duchamp used to think, but by software. In these great times should we still refer to art as a part of the creative field, or should we rather ban the term of creativity from the art’s vocabulary?
Unitasking (tentatively) is an exhibition of solipsistic machines, either dysfunctional or referring to an idiosyncratic order of things, which all together create the décor of the unitasking environment. Unitasking (tentatively) takes its starting point in the muteness and the stubbornness of the art practice, its capacity to be recalcitrant to the pervasive influence of the globalized creativity. The exhibition associates a series of newly produced drawings by the Lisbon-based French artist Mattia Denisse with new works by younger international artists currently residing in the post-graduate program at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. Mattia Denisse’s (*1967 Blois/F, lives in Lisbon) delicate pencil drawings often depict an impersonation of the artist in an imaginary studio, obsessively assembling complex machineries or preparing impossible journeys based on literary myths. Based on early conversations between the participant artists, while Denisse was in Brazil, these new drawings include many of the ideas and forms developed in the pieces realized for the exhibition, relocating them in a dream-like exotic environment. Brazilian artist Ana Vaz (*1986 Brasília, lives in Lyon) blasts in her video installation the myths of the origin by blending ruins of ancient sculptures with debris of digital technologies. Echoes of corporate slogans emerge as a monologue blurring the boundaries between personal discourse and advertisement. French artist Eva Barto (*1987 Nantes, lives in Lyon) considers the artwork as a spy, an almost clandestine object that mimics and discreetly invades the exhibition space. She replicates the entrance desk and turns it to a dysfunctional device, which includes a proliferation of props and a mock-up extension of the gallery’s website in which flickering pop-up screens show truncated images and fragmented information about artists’ alter-egos and surrogate personas. German artist Helene Hellmich (*1986 Wolmirstedt, lives in Lyon) accumulates in museum-like displays ranges of abstract shapes and drawings in a purposely administrated classification of things. In the exhibition she blows up a seemingly abstract chart, or calendar, onto a wall and unfolds a display of objects and furniture, all white, into the skeleton of a house. French artist Pauline Toyer’s (*1987 Blois, lives in Lyon) workbench-like table displays sand and cardboard architectures resisting their dissolution. Her constructive yet sentimental approach to sculpture is revealed through the contradictory dynamics of erection and decay. Sensorial materialism is at the core of Thomas Teurlai’s (*1988/F, lives in Lyon) practice: he altered ceiling fans in order to convert them into sound devices, producing a dull, physical sound. By adding a certain threat, and feeling of anxiety, he ironically underlines and subverts the somewhat administrative aesthetics of the exhibition. (François Piron, 2014)