Please, Express Yourself Just Do It
How much is the personal initiative of the staff of artistic institutions just branding? And how is self-expression managed? These are the questions behind Please, Express Yourself – Just do it, the IRL/URL exhibition project, curated by Filippo Lorenzin and hosted by Green Cube Gallery is visible until 8th December 2018.
Four international artists will explore the thin line between what is officially tolerated and personal freedom granted to the employees by designing badge pins and background wallpapers that will be worn and used by the members of staff of a major London art venue.
Carla Gannis created a brand new AR work inspired by one of the most iconic treasures of such venue, a piece that questions post-colonialism and the memeification of history. Leor Wellington composed a visual poem addressing the critical use of Front of House members of staff’s bodies. Shinji Toya will explore data collecting policy at the time of the General Data Protection Regulation with a new work blending IRL engagement with online procedures. Kamilia Kard made a new work that investigates modernist primitivism values while questioning hyper-mediated digital representation of the female body. Every two weeks each artist will be featured on the gallery’s website.
The exhibition will offer the opportunity to inquire the nature of artworks on display in a museum. Should gallery assistants be considered part of the display as much as cases and plinths? To what degree self-expression policy allows members of staff to be at the same time means of display?
Please, Express Yourself – Just do it
15th October – 8th December 2018
Curated by Filippo Lorenzin for Green Cube Gallery
Carla Gannis is a New York-based artist fascinated by digital semiotics and the situation of identity in the blurring contexts of physical and virtual. She received an MFA in painting from Boston University, and is faculty and the assistant chairperson of The Department of Digital Arts at Pratt Institute. Upon her arrival to New York in the 1990s, Gannis began incorporating digital elements into her painting-based practice. Gannis’s work has appeared in numerous exhibitions and screenings, nationally and internationally.
http://carlagannis.com
Leor Wellington is an US artist who recently received her MA in Transdisciplinary New Media from the Paris College of Art. Prior to completing her fine arts studies, she worked in Corporate America, first as an engineer and later in various business roles. She alludes to these experiences in her artistic representations, which examine shifting mores and identities in the digital age.
Shinji Toya is a Japanese multimedia artist based in London. His artistic interests include ephemerality and precariousness in the digital. The recent projects of Toya address the issues such as problems of the data economy and digital memory. Currently, he is undertaking a collaborative residency at Space dealing with bias of artificial intelligence. His previous projects were presented at Tate Modern, arebyte Gallery, Interfaces Monthly in association with Barbican, Ars Electronica, Royal Academy of Arts (UK), RSA and Beijing New Media Arts Triennial.
Kamilia Kard is an Hungarian/Italian artist based in Milan. She holds a MA Degree in Political Economy (CLEP) from the Bocconi University, Milan (2003), a BA Degree in Painting (2012), and a MA Degree in Net Art (2014), both from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milan. Kard’s work focuses on the construction of identity in the internet age. Her projects reflect on how to build an image, a narrative and an identity that interfaces and communicates in a virtual and real space. Since 2016 she teaches multimedia languages at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, Netart at Alma Artis Academy of Pisa and 3D modeling at the Academy of fine art of Carrara.
http://kamiliakard.org
Filippo Lorenzin is an Italian independent curator based in London. At the moment, his practice is focused on investigating new media art through the lens of traditional art history. He previously collaborated with many international art venues, including Saatchi Gallery, Goethe Institut and La Biennale di Venezia.
Green Cube Gallery is a nomadic online/offline exhibition space run by Guido Segni and Matìas Ezequiel Reyes. It aims to flow in and out of the digital screen in order to stress the limits and the relationship between virtual and real.