Artist: Agata Ingarden
Exhibition title: Emotional Security Services
Venue: Berthold Pott, Cologne, Germany
Date: November 17, 2023 – January 3, 2024
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Berthold Pott, Cologne
Emotional Security Services , is “an imaginary company providing certain services within the emotional dimension of The Dream House World”. In her second solo presentation in the gallery Agata Ingarden divides the space into three chapters, creating links between her projects and narratives developing over the last 3 years. Dissecting the notion of self and the other, each of the chapters brings us closer within this imaginary dream world, that of our own psyche. Ingarden navigates the space between inside and outside, bringing up notions of surveillance, confused boundaries between private and public space, and a system feeding on emotional fuel to ask wider questions on belonging, participation, home, and our relationship between the built and natural environment. Most of the works are an extension of Ingarden’s longer term research project The Dream House World – focusing on a simulation-like parallel reality invented by the artist.
Chapter I – Flesh
Social Security (Grandma’s Cupboard), 2022 and Social Security ( Bathroom Fridge), 2022
A melting carbonized sugar sculpture is locked in an artisanal container with thermoformed glass sides. Hidden within is a home security camera following the process of the melting caramel and registering movements of the spectators. The flow of charred sugar that will run unceasingly for the duration of the exhibition, elaborates on the potential of the matter. Body like fluid drips measuring time through its relation to the temperature and humidity of the space. Glass walls, molded onto the same half-spheres used to “convey” the black liquid, seem to quiver on the brink of implosion. Each of the facades, representing a slightly different temperature of the melted glass.
Two works were conceived during a residency at Fondation d’Entreprise Martell in Cognac in a production partenariat for the exhibition Barbe à Papa, curated by Cédric Fauq at CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, Bordeaux.
Chapter II – Home
Mothman – a bedtime story, 2023
Above a little bed hovers an anthropomorphic figure made out of deconstructed suit and fabrics from the costumes used in the performances presented in the video works 4ROOMS. Printed moths and inside layerings come out from the back of the jacket, suggesting wings of an insect body. The corporate uniform mutates, rips and reassembles into the next stage of the metamorphosis of the Butterfly People character. Approaching the surface of reality, the two camera eyed figure surveys the surface of the realm of sleep.
Chapter III – Corporation
4ROOMS ( Base, Metal, Rave, Rhythm), 2023
The four videos represent 4 rooms in The Dream House World. Within its architecture these spaces provide energy for the functioning of the system. Dream House is an imaginary program generating a real-life simulation for a group of characters called Butterfly People and supervised by characters called Emo-Polis. All the experiences of Butterfly People, their movements, feelings, emotional states and sweat becomes the fuel that keeps the program running. Each video focuses on a live documented performance related to music (composed specifically for the project in collaboration with Wladimir Schall) designed to create a specific reaction of the participants, affecting different parts of their body and emotional states. Base score access to the core – the gravity point. Metal relates to the strings being pulled, the tendons, the muscles and the limbs. Rave score, with its high pitch rhythm brings the heartbeat up, relates to blood flow – the ecstasy and the fatigue. Rhythm score with its deconstructed rhythmics, focuses on corporal communication as in – the beginning of the language. In the videos the main timeline of the performance from the room is kept true to reality, with some elements happening in different spaces (elevators, corridors, an outdoor mirror sphere) suggesting a parallel – maybe mental dimension – that the characters access through the state of trance induced by the music or the system of the program itself. Each of the rooms is connected loosely with a different stage of a transformation of a butterfly and at the same time represents a stage of growing up as an individual and within a group. This emotional dimension is a playground to explore the experience of becoming a “being”, the idea of memory and constructing/recomposing identity.
The Dream House World starts from the exhibition Rescue dummies – Incorporate Elevators shown in Kiev in 2021 for the Future Generation Art Prize in Pinchuk ArtCentre and continues in series of works: Inside The Dream House (2022), Mushroom Brain (2022), shown at Fondation Fiminco, Paris and Piktogram Gallery, Warsaw, and 4Rooms (2023) a video installation shown at Tono Festival for performance, dance and video art in Mexico City, in Centro de Cultura Digital, Mexico City.
Agata Ingarden, Polish, born 1994, lives and works in Paris. Studied at Beaux-Arts, Paris, France and Cooper Union, Brooklyn, USA.
She works with multiple media including installation, sculpture and video. Her practice is driven by material research as well as investigations in post-humanities, science fiction and mythical narratives.
Selected exhibitions: Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France / CAPC museum, Bordeaux, France (curated exhibition by Cédric Fauq)/ The Radicants: “Climate Change”, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, Palazzo Bollani, Venice, Italy / Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Germany / Künstlerhaus Vienna, Austria / Silesian Museum Katowice, Poland / Pinchuck Art Center, Kiev, Ukrania (Future Generation Art Price, winner of the “Special Prize”) / Komi Biennale, Art Encounters, Timisoara, Romania, curated by Kasia Redzisz and Mihnea Mircan / Museum Unter Tage, Bochum, Germany / Centre D´Art Contemporain D´Intérèt National, Saint Nazaire, France / East Contemporary, Milan, Italy / Kraupa Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin, Germany / Piktogram, Warsaw, Poland / Soft Opening, London, UK / Sans Titre, Paris, France / Berthold Pott, Cologne, Germany / Exo Exo, Paris, France / High Art, Paris, France
Agata participated in the following residencies: Fondation Fiminco, Paris, France (2021-22), Cité internationale des arts, Paris, France (2021), A l´oeuvre, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris, France (2020), La Totale, Les studios Orta, France (2020), Villa Belleville, Paris, France (2018), Leo XIII Gastatelier, Tilburg, The Netherlands (2018)
