Spiros Hadjidjanos at Future Gallery

Artist: Spiros Hadjidjanos

Exhibition title: Spiros Hadjidjanos

Venue: Future Gallery, Berlin, Germany

Date: December 10, 2016 – January 28, 2017

Photography: Andrea Rosetti, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Future Gallery, Berlin

Future Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of new works by Spiros Hadjidjanos.

Crowd Simulation Breakdown incorporates crowd simulation technology–a technique used in film as a means to create virtual cinematography. This work is Hadjidjanos’ first experiment with the process of simulating the movement of a large number of entities with implicated collective social behavior based on group dynamics. The video exemplifies the breakdown of various simulated scenes in which a crowd runs inexplicably while a densely charged audio plays. Sampling sound from moments after the most fatal suicide attacks of 2016, Hadjidjanos merges in his video work actual audio captured by people’s personal smart phones, or less often, the media. The piece is therefore constructed of actual sourced and artificially generated footage that leads the viewer into a sort of contextualized conflict where reality and authenticity are questioned. Simultaneously, the 3D animation does not intend to deceive; Hadjidjanos’ aim is not to create a high-end film nor a particular narrative but to show the process of doing so. The film compositing techniques are entirely transparent to the viewer, weaving one scene constructed from simulated characters into the next one.

The HD/VR Sculpture–an evolutionary development originating from Hadjidjanos’ Network Sculptures (2010-2016) which incorporates the sine wave form and enables information particles to flow via material connectivity– is a conductor of digital data. It functions as an intermediate input path between two active end-points; the seemingly static bowed legs clandestinely transmit all information that passes from a computer to the destination, a VR headset. The HD/VR sculpture is a spatial portrayal of data in motion, a palpable representation of information we generally perceive as intangible. Donning the headset the viewer is transported to a chimeric virtual space, yet one element remains familiar, for the central virtual subject matter is the sculpture itself, replicated at various scales.

The series of works Taraxacum officinale originate from an image of the German photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch depicting a dandelion seed-head. Hadjidjanos manifests these works, 3D printed in alumide, a derivative of aluminium –the latter developed in the era the particular photograph was taken– and as prints on carbon fibre plates depicting the surface normals, a precise mathematical representation of the orientation of each object’s surface. Using the dimensions of the original photograph to magnify from, with the addition of the third dimension, depth, these works are three-dimensional depth maps of the sourced photograph. By applying forces to these malleable surfaces in a simulated environment, Hadjidjanos transforms their planar surfaces; their form adapts and traces other spatial elements (pedestal, wall, floor). These transformations function as metaphorical reference to the actual plant. The morphology of a Taraxacum officinale seed-head provokes a multitude of associations dealing with transformation.

Spiros Hadjidjanos (*1978, Athens, GR) graduated from Berlin University of the Arts and lives and works in Berlin. This is his third solo exhibition with the gallery. He has had recent exhibitions at venues including: Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Kammerspiele, Munich; Volksbühne, Berlin; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York; Yerba Buena Center of the Arts, San Francisco; CA2M, Madrid; Centre d’Art Bastille, Grenoble.

*The VR/HD Sculpture has been developed in collaboration with Metaphysics VR.