TruEYE surView

TruEYE surView is part of a series of exhibitions conceptually related to the theme of Post Internet Survival Guide, a catalogue-book published by Revolver Publishing in early 2011. Through online archives of works by young ‘digital native’ artists, I attempted to register survival strategies and tools crucial to us today, to re-imagine the very idea of survival and evolution at the dawn of bio-information technologies.

Instigated by the discussions around Post Internet Survival Guide, TruEYE surView presents Anne de Vries (NL) and Yngve Holen (NO/DE), two artists whose works share a common sensitivity to the merging of matter and information. Both artists work with a variety of means, including photography, installation, video and sculpture. As illustrated by an installation based on a smart fridge cut in pieces by a waterjet-knife (Holen), or a photograph of a naked woman with a mobile phone standing on her knees in a Cartesian coordinate system (de Vries), their practices address our increasing entanglement with technology – its material and symbolic origins, its influence on our sense of social reality, its socio-political implications and its future potentials.

From the mines, energy plants and factories, where the hardware basis of information technologies comes to being, to brand names, advertising images, product displays, personal use, and ultimately piles of toxic waste – commodities undergo a variety of state changes throughout complex ecological cycles. Considering that what lies at the heart of every living being is genetic information, we are approaching an uncanny valley where life and technology co-exist in a blurry commonality of their informational origin and material essence, each propagating an agenda of their own. Neolithic agricultural revolution for instance, can be seen not as an invention – a new human technology – but a state change, a result of co-evolutionary development between humans and edible grasses. In this process of the collaborative deforestation of land only some benefits were shared by humans. If we can look at the spread of Internet of Things as equivalent to the Neolithic agrarian revolution, then what is information technology's relationship with us as species? What does it take for a commodity to be alive, and what are the ecological principles of art?

Curating this exhibition is a next step in approaching a 'neo-materialistic' understanding of contemporary art as a domain of a heightened density of value flows, and information technologies as an expanding ecology. In TruEYE surView Anne de Vries and Yngve Holen are merging these domains in fluid assemblages, proposing visionary semi-stable structures out of material flows that are constitutive of today’s digital data-driven society.

— Katja Novitskova, artist and designer

Photo's: Idan Shilon

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Yngve Holen (NO, b. 1982)

lives and works in Berlin. He graduated from the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste (Städelschule), Frankfurt am Main. Recent solo exhibitions include Parasagittal Brain, Johan Berggren Gallery, Malmö, Half Asleep to the 2010 Hot One Thousand and One, Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt am Main, Paloma Presents, Zürich and Landings Projectspace, Vestfosse, Norway. Selected group exhibitions include Approximately Infinite Universe, New Jerseyy, Basel (2008). He recently co-curated the exhibition The Smart Frrridge, is also co-initiator of the web-based publisher XYM and co-organizer of the club BODY XEROX. http://www.johanberggren.com/holen-001.html

Anne de Vries (NL, b. 1977)

works and lives between Amsterdam and Berlin. His work has been shown frequently in a wide range of museums, artist spaces, galleries, online and printed publications, including Rhizome (NYC), Gentili Apri (Berlin), Foam (Amsterdam), Preteen (Mexico City), The Future Gallery (Berlin), W139 (Amsterdam), Grimm Museum (Berlin), Watou (Belgium), Darsa Comfort (Zurich), Hyeres (France) and The Armory (New York). De Vries graduated from Rietveld Academie and is currently a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. http://www.annedevries.info/

Katja Novitskova (EST/NL, b. 1984)

is an artist, curator and graphic designer born in Estonia, living and working in Amsterdam. Novitskova’s artistic and curatorial work has been exhibited and distributed in places like the Future Gallery / Transmediale in Berlin, Mediamatic, NIMK and W139 in Amsterdam, New Capital in Chicago, Woodmill in London; with upcoming shows at New Gallery in London, Xpace in Toronto and B Galleria in Turku among others. http://katjanovi.net/

Links

Webshop catalogue TruEYE surView