ON-SCREEN AND OFF at Bid Project

Artists: BB5000, Gina Folly, Michele Gabriele, Tilman Hornig, Pakui Hardware, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Nicolas Pelzer, Sung Tieu, Yannick Val Gesto

Exhibition title: ON-SCREEN AND OFF

Curated by: Domenico de Chirico

Venue: Bid Project, Milan, Italy

Date: March 25 – April 30, 2016

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Bid Project, Milan

Bid Project Gallery is proud to present ‘ON-SCREEN AND OFF’, a group exhibition curated by Domenico de Chirico, featuring woks by BB5000, Gina Folly, Michele Gabriele, Tilman Hornig, Pakui Hardware, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Nicolas Pelzer, Sung Tieu, and Yannick Val Gesto.

In a world populated by intelligent and pervasive technologies, among sensory experiences and necessary demonstrations, how further will men be able to tread the path of recreating Nature and what will it mean to be free in a world that potentially knows everything about everyone?

BB5000. ‘I really love the boyfriend’. Ruins generated by the supposed survival of ornamental codes emerge from mire. It is a sentient fauna coded under zero-set polar coordinates; a satiating, transfiguring filter menu. ‘Girls do it in the mud (serenity evolution)’. The girls are sending you inner peace and serenity. A primitive layout shapes up over a landscape of rocky cliffs.

BB5000 is an artists group formed in 2015, based in Milan. It consists of Giada Carnevale, Arcangelo Costanzo, Francesco Saverio Costanzo, Filippo De Marchi, Giovanni Riggio. Its latest exhibition was ‘ℋy℘erℜruⅈn’, solo show at Davide Gallo Gallery, Milan.

Gina Folly. ‘Me you 2’ are replicas of the artist’s ears, sculpted in marble. It’s a series of five pairs, three pairs made out of white marble from Carrara (Tuscany) and two out of Portuguese marble in a neutral hue. Each of the pieces is original and handmade, and together they form a series. Gina Folly created them last year during her residency in Rome at Istituto Svizzero. The work was inspired by a series of photographs of ears by Isa Genzken that she took in the early eighties in New York. Already during her studies at art school, Gina had worked on several imitations of the photo series from Genzken with her ears. She recalls having had an issue with them since being a kid, because they are super-tiny but they stick out and it was always a topic of conversation with her family and friends. During her residency last year in Rome, she got very inspired by all the fantastic sculpture works of the city. That’s how the ear topic came up again and it was a perfect moment to finally objectify them. For their production, the artist worked together with a sculptor from San Lorenzo, an offbeat student neighbourhood in Rome.

Gina Folly, born in 1983. Lives and works in Basel and Berlin. Since 2013 she’s been running the artist space Taylor Macklin in Zürich together with Adam Cruces, Selina Grüter, Michèle Graf and Thomas Julier: www.taylormacklin.com. Folly’s work has been shown at Ermes Ermes, Kunsthalle Basel, ML Artspace, Kunsthaus Glarus, SALTS, Spreez, Plymouth Rock, Kunsthaus Baselland, New Jerseyy, CentrePasquArt, Ellis King and Istituto Svizzero among others.

Michele Gabriele. Self-contained ‘FakeFriend’ is an attempt to outline experiences and reveal the sharpest and most unnecessary details of personal or generic stories. The artist muses about how the human mind will sometime charge everyday objects with a responsibility of some sort, and he has chosen his materials for their ability to meet those inclinations. He calls to mind a recurring mental image of a woman walking into a house, opening a drawer, finding an hairbrush in it and bursting into tears right after. This is why he has chosen items that have the ability to convey mixed emotions, to be at the same time, daily or common, but also items that would only exist as themselves, with the capacity to remain very open in their simplicity. In Michele Gabriele’s words ’FakeFriend’ is a little sad, like a feeling of slight pain: reminiscent of a laugh immediately after crying.

Michele Gabriele, born in Fondi (LT), Italy, in 1983. Currently lives in Milan.
He studied Fine Art at Academy of Fine Art of Brera, in Milan (2003/2007). Forthcoming exhibitions include “Aujourd’hui je dis oui” Galeria da Boavista, Lisbon (group show). Some recent exhibitions were: “They are standing there, under the weather, totally waterproof or completely wet”, Konstanet Space, Kunstihoone Art All, Tallinn (solo show); “No Need to Hunt, Just Wait for the Roadkill”, StoreContemporary, Dresden (group show); “Good time and Nocturnal news #3”, Overgarden, Copenhagen (group show); “#vaporfolk #hollyvoodoo #digitalnaive”, Lust Gallery, Wien (group show).

Tilman Hornig. Initially the artist began the ‘TXT on Devices’ series with texts on canvases. Text serves as a medium and body of content in a broader sense. The pieces consist of multiple text sources that combined and abstracted into new ones are no longer understandable—their sources rendered incomprehensible. The generated text results in a new entity appearing as complicated and generalist as possible. On the one hand the vehicles for the text are technical devices like a hard drive that opens its own space of association or on the other hand they can be a hand-made canvas looking like a classic painting. The artist’s concern lies in the anticipation and association of content / content that appears immediately to the viewer / reader, as soon as he / she perceives a text.

Tilman Hornig, born 1980, lives and works in Dresden, studied Fine Art (2002-2008), artist residency at Iscp, NYC (2009), artist residency at Yogjakarta, Indonesia (2011), founder of New Scenario, shows (selection) 2016: back to painting, Galerie Gebr. Lehmann, Works from the Collection, Info-Punkt, Berlin, Episode 4 Bathroom, Oslo10, Basel, 2015: Physical End, Art Berlin Contemporary, Berlin (solo), How my mom got hacked, Dash, Kortrijk, JURASSIC PAINT, New Scenario, Your Time is not my Time, Curatorial Final Show, Appel de Arts Center, Amsterdam, We wanted to be better & ended up being happy, Fenetreprojects & Gallery Joseph Tang, Paris, Deep Screen, Parc Leger, Pouges-les-Eaux, France, C R A S H New Scenario.

Pakui Hardware. ‘The Metaphysics of the Runner’ (Resin, carbon sheet, 23×56 cm) is part of a large-scale namesake installation. It embodies the hybrid condition of a body today—somewhere between organic and artificial, between an inefficient vehicle and an incredible mechanism, between being prepared for the future with active sports or chemical supplements and being doomed to become obsolete and left behind by new forms of existence.
In ‘In the Blink of an Eye’ (3D motion graphics, 0:40 min.) the blinks of a human eye have been accelerated to present a comic vision of a human attempt to keep pace with certain technological devises. The expression “A blink of an eye” has so far been used to convey the shortest possible fraction of time, yet this ‘obsolete’ notion is to be now redefined in relation to phenomena such as the algorithmic interactions in High-Frequency Trading. Those algorithms trade and make decisions at a pace that no human being would be able to keep up with and to comprehend.

Pakui Hardware is the name (coined by Alex Ross) for the collaborative artist duo Neringa Cerniauskaite and Ugnius Gelguda born in 2014 — though the duo has worked together since 2012. Their latest solo shows have been exhibited at MUMOK, Vienna (forthcoming), ExoExo, Paris (in collaboration with Fenetreproject), kim? Contemporary Art Center, Riga, Jenifer Nails, Frankfurt, Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius, 321 Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, NADA New York. The artists have participated in group shows at National Gallery of Art, Vilnius (forthcoming), Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) Derry~Londonderry, Northern Ireland, ExoExo, Paris, Podium, Oslo, Threads: A Phantasmagoria about Distance (curated by Nicolas Bourriaud), Kaunas Biennial, Lithuania, Valentin, Paris, Soy Capitan, Berlin, Moderna Museet, Malmö, Sweden, CCS Bard / Hessel Museum of Art, New York, and ar/ge Kunst Gallery Museum, Bolzano, Italy. The artists are IASPIS grant holders in Sweden, fall of 2014.

Jaakko Pallasvuo. In ‘Nu Painting (Documentary)’ the artist reflects upon his digital painting practice from the point of view of a far future, where technological interfaces are no longer necessary.

Jaakko Pallasvuo (born 1987) lives in Helsinki. His work grapples with social fields and the role of the artist in them. The work takes shape as video, ceramics, writing, murals and performance. Pallasvuo’s work has been shown at 1646, Kunsthalle St Gallen, Seventeen Gallery, Transformation Marathon, CAC Vilnius, American Medium and Future Gallery among others.

Nicolas Pelzer. The series ‘Muscle Remainder’ consists of water-jet cut foam wall objects that associate inlays of toolboxes custom-made to protect the instruments. Among recognizable shapes, like a crowbar or a screwdriver, the viewer discovers silhouettes that are difficult to classify, making the whole composition an abstract placeholder for unknown variables. Muscle Remainder conjures up the physical effort and labour that a tool both requires and produces in contrast with the machine-controlled cut outs of the piece.

Nicolas Pelzer, born 1982 in Dinslaken, Germany. Lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the University of the Arts in Berlin, at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne and at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts, Ghent. Pelzer has exhibited at various museums and institutions such as Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp, 2016; Kunsthaus Hamburg, 2015; Future Gallery (solo), Berlin, 2014; Kunst im Tunnel, Düsseldorf, 2014; Artsonje Center (solo), Seoul, 2013; Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten, Marl (solo), 2013; Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, 2012; Kunstverein for the Rhinelands and Westphalia, Düsseldorf, 2010; and Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, 2008.

Sung Tieu. ‘Wind’: it is a glass mirror showing a bird swarm formation, which is traced and then erased. Specifically, it looks at the swarm formation of the Northern Wheatear, a passerine bird, which has one of the furthest migration routes out of all small birds. The birds migrate from Alaska to Africa twice a year. The mirror is held up by water wings, which are swim aids designed for children to help float in water. The work titled ‘Wind’ refers to a force of nature and further investigates the necessity of certain species to migrate and how that instinctual need to survive leads to movement. The work, by physically reflecting viewers in the mirror once standing in front of it, forces an active engagement with the sculpture and elicits a reflection about the viewers’ “position” towards these issues.

Sung Tieu, born 1987 in Hai Duong, Vietnam and raised in Germany since 1992, currently lives and works in London. She studied Fine Art at Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg (2009-2013) and Goldsmiths College, London (2012). As a recipient of the ‘Neue Kunst in Hamburg’ stipend, she will be working and researching in Vietnam from March 2016. Forthcoming exhibitions include Neue Kunst in Hamburg, curated by Rhea Dall, This is your Replacement, Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf (group show) and Premiums, Royal Academy of Arts, London (group show). Recent exhibitions were Emotion Refuge, Micky Schubert, Berlin (solo show), W A R II, Mostyn, Wales (group show), By Boat (Farewell), Gallery José Garcia, Mexico City (group show), Gallery Artists’ Group Show, Micky Schubert, Berlin and DEEP SKIN, Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNOlab), Ontario (group show).

Yannick Val Gesto. ‘Babyborn’: the artist admits to a self-confessed tendency to look for ‘hidden gems’ online— an act which fuels his art practice. He tries to find ‘rare’ pieces of visual integrity that can range from fan art to photographs to personalised memes, etc. What is most important to him throughout the search for visual material is that there be a notion of emotion or expression, a longing for happiness in digitalisation, no matter how naive or ugly the piece might be. It’s this specific type of visual information that he likes to alter into something of his own. That—backed up by a formation in graphic design—results in compositions drenched with information and aesthetics shiny at times, dirty at others.

Yannick Val Gesto (born in 1987, Borgerhout, Belgium) is a Belgian artist living and working in Antwerp. He’s been working with Levy.Delval since 2013 and has exhibited internationally at places like Higher Pictures (US), Gloria Knight Gallery (NZ), Sunday Art Fair (UK) and Ausstellungsraum Klingental (CH). He recently had a solo exhibition titled Booming at Cinnnamon in Rotterdam. For this occasion the artist presented a series of digital prints with securely layered vector collages that depict various characters and symbols. The works were accompanied by a big mural drawing and a video which both conjured a desire for digital detox and calmness.