Artist: Amalia Ulman
Exhibition title: REPUTATION
Curated by: Pierre-Alexandre Mateos and Charles Teyssou
Venue: New Galerie, Paris, France
Date: October 20 – December 17, 2016
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and New Galerie, Paris
The pioneer of a still loosely defined practice, Amalia Ulman uses social networks as a stage for her performances. From Downtown Los Angeles, she has begun a narrative arc impregnated with false pretenses and strangely familiar twists and turns. Having moved into an office, she discovers herself as a business woman and adopts a pigeon named Bob; a grotesque alter ego. Adept at the paranoiaccritical method, she begins a descent into which the US elections and viral dynamics accumulate in a Piranesi labyrinth of psychoses. Gradually transforming the world into a magnetic field of evidence, her online persona becomes the point where all the signs of a conspiracy delirium converge.
For her exhibition REPUTATION at New Galerie, Amalia Ulman has transformed each room of the space into a diffracted mirror of her virtual universe. Center of different social mutations and passing processes, the first room is a partial reproduction of her office in Los Angeles. Encircled by pigeon spikes, it is a highly corrosive mixture of counterfeit items, hermetic symbols, and WASP nostalgia.
Downstairs is a mural about office life obviously inspired by the cartoons of The New Yorker. Small betrayals, low-blows, and Monday morning sadness coexist on a drab, cheap surface of laminated tile and other objects like juggling balls and deflated balloons.
In the final room Bob transitions from a working class hero, into a god of sorts, canonized as an animatronic version of himself. In this presumably static cabinet, the air becomes scarcer as his conjugal expectations and social ambitions increase. Can a feral pigeon become a white dove? Is the artist a girl, a woman, a mother or a whore? Are we being watched by the paperclip or are we the paperclip?
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, The Park, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Temple Of Bob, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Bob’s Office, 2016
Amalia Ulman, The Park, 2016
Amalia Ulman, The Park, 2016
Amalia Ulman, The Park, 2016
Amalia Ulman, The Park, 2016
Amalia Ulman, The Park, 2016
Amalia Ulman, The Park, 2016
Amalia Ulman, The Park, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Temple Of Bob, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Temple Of Bob, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Temple Of Bob, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Temple Of Bob, 2016
Amalia Ulman, Temple Of Bob, 2016