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May 3, 2007- June 30, 2007
Reception: May 3, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
assume vivid astro focus
John Connelly Presents
625 W 27th StJohn Connelly Presents (JCP) is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new work by assume vivid astro focus (avaf). The exhibition will use the architecture of the gallery to create a dialogue between three distinct environments featuring an installation of 3-D wallpaper, a dark subterranean corridor of music and flashing neon sculptures, and a cordoned multi-disciplinary room that will feature an ongoing series of music-related performances.
In the main gallery an installation of text-based wallpaper consisting of grids of four-letter words - BUSH, IRAQ, SPIT, HOMO, DYKE, ANAL, IRAN, AMEN, PRAY, EVIL, LOVE, EDEN, HOPE… - alludes to the iconic design of Robert Indiana’s LOVE emblem from the 60's and General Idea's AIDS insignia from the late 80's. “Four-letter words” tend to have a special status in the English language and in most cases reflect the more crude, sexual subset of the lexicon. The virus-like dispersion of these terms throughout the walls of the gallery and their political tenor suggest how the public policies and decisions made by our governments indiscriminately contaminate and shape our private lives and futures. By inviting the viewer to don a special mask with custom 3-D glasses to view the wallpaper, the artists also encourage the viewer's participation in activating the work from a two-dimensional static experience into a three-dimensional event that is both sculptural and temporal.
The gallery's basement space, which is usually reserved for storage of artwork and tools, is transformed into a long dark corridor illuminated by a sequence of five animated abstract neon sculptures. The sculptures syncopate and flash along to a custom soundtrack featuring music by PolaroidHomoPhoto (an anonymous duo that looped a fragment of the song Zombi by French musician Sebastien Tellier). Furthering the multi-dimensional experience of the wallpaper installation upstairs, avaf's corridor of light and sound combines the aural and visual into a visceral occurrence meant to stimulate both the mind and the body. The space itself - marginal, dark and intimate- reflects upon avaf's interest in the multilayering of both structure and image and the generation of new platforms, vistas and vanishing points through architectural tools such as barricades and stairways.
In the JCP project room avaf has transplanted an installation from their 2006 solo show, absorb viral attack fantasy at Hiromi Yoshii, Tokyo comprised of wallpaper, sculptures, video, neons, and balloons. Here, the group continues to explore the fertile confluence between art, architecture, performance and entertainment by presenting an ongoing series of performances and events including Barr, Tobias Bernstrup, Julie Atlas Muz, Loconuts, Ann Magnuson, Japanther, Good Good and Frankie Martin (full schedule to be announced). However, the entrance to the project room has been sealed shut and the only given access to both the performances and installation is peering through portholes fitted with sheaths and wigs.
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Members of assume vivid astro focus (avaf) were born anytime between the 20th and 21st centuries in various parts of the world. avaf has had solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Wien; Indianapolis Museum of Art; John Connelly Presents, NYC; Deitch Projects, NYC: Peres Projects, LA/Berlin; galeria Triângulo, São Paulo, Brazil; Hiromi Yoshii Gallery, Tokyo, Japan and Galleria Massimo de Carlo, Milan, Italy. Public Projects include Make It With You: A Slow Dance Club (collaboration with Los Super Elegantes), Frieze Art Fair, London, UK, 2004 and assume vivid astro focus IX, public art project for Central Park sponsored by The Public Art Fund, New York, USA in conjunction with the Whitney Museum of American Art 2004 Biennial. Upcoming projects include, Destroy Athens, Athens Biennial, Fall, 2007, AVAF XVIII, Deitch Projects, New York, Fall 2007; Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967, MCA Chicago, Fall 2007- Winter 2008; Space for The Future, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Fall 2007 - Winter 2008.
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Excerpts from Gerald Matt in conversation with assume vivid astro focus published in the catalog for the exhibition assume vivid astro focus: Open Call at the Kunsthalle Wien Project Space, June 7 - August 27, 2006
GM: How does decision-making work in a collective? Can everything actually be discussed and always resolve in with consensus?
avaf: It's less about consensus, than about trust and admiration. We trust one another and admire one another's visions. Sometimes one of us brings up an idea that is contrary to what the others were thinking, but it is accepted out of admiration anyway. That presents us with new roads and ways of seeing the work. We are not control freaks and, in fact, we like change and challenges. There is no mastermind who tells the others what we will go for. So, whenever we are faced with a decision, we either go for the most reasonable option, or for the change - what we haven't done yet. As the work is composed of so many different layers, there is room for various decisions.
GM: Particularly in the 20th Century, the role of the author was heavily discussed. Post-structuralists, such as Michel Foucault or Roland Barthes, even announced the death of the author, and thereby - as it were- generated the birth of the reader. With multiple authorship, does the accent shift from an over-powerful author in favor of the recipient?
avaf: We truly wish that was true. We think that this shift is a bit more complicated than just questioning authorship. It is also related to the way the institutions usually work. Our projects are particularly affected by this relationship, because whatever we bring to a space, we make specifically for it. There is a lot of self-censorship and paranoia concerning lawsuits from the institution nowadays, which end up shaping artists' projects in many ways. In fact the biggest challenge for us is always the institution, which constantly poses obstacles whenever we want to shift the power to the recipient. We are frequently asked to rearrange/change our ideas. It's not that we put a finished and self-contained painting in the space and just hang it up....
GM: Precisely the wallpapers mix abstract and figurative forms. They overlap, mutually condition, and generate one another. What is the relationship between abstraction and configuration? What significance does ornament have in your works?
avaf: We approach the conception of our installations and the conception of the wallpaper in a similar way we approach music. In our opinion, music is the media closest to perfection, in terms of reaching the viewer and transmitting ideas. We envy music's power. the way we deal with our installations is, from our point of view, music-like. The way music reaches out to people is very corporeal. It elicits an immediate reaction. Your body can even transmit music (like Laurie Anderson's 1977 Hanphone Table project). Music uses our bodies as an instrument of its manifestation; it becomes personified through our bodies. This link between corporeal and sensorial realms interests us. Music is also universal, easily transmittable, and shareable. Music changes people's lives. This is also related to your previous idea of the recipient. in this sense, the relation between abstract and figurative elements is like composing a song: the elements enrich, contradict, enhance, hide, juxtapose, and clash against one another...
GM: You create all-encompassing art works. In your shows, alongside architectonic interventions and wallpapers, there are often music and film/video programs. How did this situation arise?
avaf: The wallpapers are on of the tools we use to involve the viewer in a conceptual/sensorial experience. For us, one important element in our projects is to create a space, through installation, in which many layers of ideas and actions are possible. we see the installations as a space of diversity and multiplicity. Our wallpapers were always conceived according to the space given to us, and since the very beginning, there has been some degree of public participation. Because the wallpapers were (are) always related to a specific space, architecture gradually became more and more present in the work. From that moment on, it was only natural to provide a space and/or performance that would envelop and activate the viewer. It is a process whereby the viewer - artwork relationship is altered or even reversed in some way: instead of the viewer looking at a wall, we wanted a wall to literally absorb the viewer - and the most obvious way to achieve this was for the picture to acquire its missing third dimension, i.e. to evolve from a two-dimensional piece to a three-dimension entity: by either "giving birth" to free-standing sculptures or by becoming a sculpture itself. A fourth dimension, time, is rendered, for instance, through inflated balloons that expire within a few days, through one-shot performances on the day of the opening, and, of course, through the fact that some pieces are destroyed after each show. Thoughts about architecture bring us closer to the viewer. The public needs to be the master of architecture and to mold it according to their needs and dreams. our growing relationship to architecture has made avaf projects even more ephemeral. A lot of our installations are simply destroyed after the show comes down. We are also really interested in this reminiscence, in this memory of space.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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John Connelly Presents was last updated: 2008-10-07
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