Exhibition

Exhibition: Myths of the Marble

(Photo: Detail Ane Graff, "What Oscillates", 2017.)

Although "virtual reality" might conjure associations with early cybernetic theory and computer animation, today "virtuality" permeates both physical space and online experience. At a moment when the capacity to depict the world in high definition has never been greater, reality is itself increasingly articulated as a construction. In this respect, it is essential that the "virtual" be seen not simply as an escapist technology promoted by Silicon Valley, but reclaimed as a metaphor or proposition to navigate lived sociopolitical experience.

Contributers to this international exhibition from Oslo National Academy of The Arts are Susanne M. Winterling, professor and Ane Graff, research fellow. Both from The Academy of Fine Arts.

Other artists participating are Rachel De Joode, Cayetano Ferrer, Ignas Krunglevicius, Daria Martin, Chris Marker, Florian Meisenberg, Shahryar Nashat, Sondra Perry and Jacolby Satterwhite.

Opening hours are Tuesday - Sunday, at 11:00-17.00.

Seminar

Friday February 3, 2017 13:00-17:00

Free and open to the public, but require registration. The seminar will be held in English.

Co-organized by Henie Onstad kunstsenter and Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania (ICA) in collaboration with MA Curatorial Practice, Bergen Academy of Art and Design.

This half day symposium considers how the virtual, in both a critical and material sense, is being theorized and deployed by contemporary practitioners. How has the “virtual” as a perceptual space been engaged by contemporary artists as a way to image and imagine the world as both a site of possibility and as a set of limitations? How does this expanded space connect to how bodies position themselves in the real world with regard to race, gender, and architecture? How might we consider the virtual not only as an escapist technological condition, but as rooted in the political stakes of embodied lived experience? How is the fluid relationship between the analog and digital impacting materiality?

Discussions will be anchored in the diverse art practices represented in the exhibition, with short presentations by each artist in front of their works. The second half of the symposium will consist of panel discussions. Participation from the audience is very much encouraged!

Participating artists: Rachel De Joode, Cayetano Ferrer, Ane Graff, Ignas Krunglevičius, Florian Meisenberg, Sondra Perry, and Susanne M. Winterling.

More on the exhibition

While the exhibition troubles the line between the analog and the digital it also reflects back on the context of the museum and the body of the viewer. In so doing it suggests a more nuanced approach to technological production (be it hard, soft, or wet) that insists on materiality and the mobilization of a new political imaginary. Here, the virtual is a space of potentiality, a space in which to explore material agency and to push against, to move beyond, and to reflect back on human limitations. As a result, Myths of the Marble considers alternative forms of virtuality that meditate on extensions of the body, ecological formations, and architectural space and that emphasize the time-bound, the perceptual, and the haptic.

These ideas are explored through a wide range of mediums from painting, sculpture, and installation to video, 16mm film, and VR-technology by an international group of artists: Rachel De Joode, Cayetano Ferrer, Ane Graff, Ignas Krunglevičius, Chris Marker, Daria Martin, Florian Meisenberg, Shahryar Nashat, Sondra Perry, Jacolby Satterwhite, and Susanne M. Winterling.

The exhibition is initiated by Henie Onstad Kunstsenter and conceived and produced in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, where the exhibition will travel in April 2017. The two institutions have co-commissioned seven new works, and will also co-produce a fully illustrated catalogue published by Sternberg Press with contributions by scholars Tom Holert and Homay King in June 2017.