All Art Is an Image. Performing Representation

Arte, Musica, Arti Performative, Fotografia

STUDIOHOMEAWARENESS, Via Francesco de Sanctis, 2, Milano, MI, 20141, Italia

11/01/2024

On January 11, 2024, COEVAL launches a series of events in collaboration with STUDIOHOMEAWARENESS that will see the space host offline exhibitions and performances inspired by COEVAL platform everyday research. Each event will be curated by creatives from different backgrounds, from the arts to fashion, from music to AI-based practices.

COEVAL events at STUDIOHOMEAWARENNES are an exercise of community making in the context of a city such as Milan where the FOMO feeling is ruling over networking events and routines. Australian architect and urban planner William J. Mitchell states that today's urban planners are tasked with writing computer codes to create virtual places and electronic interconnections. Within these places designed for transmediality, social contacts, economic transactions, and cultural life unfold, while surveillance is enacted. Based on this observation, we ask: what are the limits and potentialities of physical space in cities today, when space is a luxury subject to speculation beyond human control? STUDIOHOMEAWARENESS is transformed into a space for negotiating being social without having to perform but to decompress and meditate in a futuristic way. A place to enjoy a curated space for contemporary relaxation.

COEVAL hosts a hybrid exhibition curated by Ilaria Sponda, who’s proposing “All Art Is an Image. Performing Representation” a group exhibition in hybrid form: partly a video screening of sculptural artworks’ photographic documentations by BN+Brinanovara, S()fia Braga, Hyun Cho, Alessandra Draghi, Naomi Nakazato, Carolina Papetti, Linn Phyllis Seeger, and Vincenzo Zancana, partly a traditional exhibition showcasing physical works by Hyun Cho and Vincenzo Zancana. The screening exhibition is a randomic video performance of representations of works put on display elsewhere, at asynchronous times and seemingly generic locations. By stating that "all art is an image," the curator highlights the significance of 'installation views' in contemporary art exhibitions. Documentation practices and aesthetic standards are largely determined by the platforms on which they circulate, often reaching viewers before they have a chance to experience the actual artwork in person.

The video performance treats photographic installation views as digital equivalents of exhibitions, which often play a more active role in the art world's transactions than their physical counterparts. The online circulation of these exhibition images generates new value for artworks and contributes to altered processes of legitimization. The visible decline in the importance of physical exhibition spaces indicates a new relationship between the copy and the original, one that is based on time rather than a specific location. It leads to the conclusion that the version of an artwork or exhibition encountered by the viewer first is considered the original. This paradoxical reproduction of artworks results in the creation of a new cult model driven by the desire to align with the new "global art" canon shaped by international platforms and to achieve visibility and searchability online. The video is produced by Motion Designer Nobel. The selected artists are part of Coeval’s archive of publications, chosen by the curator for the affinity of topics covered such as projection beyond the appearance of reality, contemporary icons, identity and representation between real and virtual.

From 7PM to 9PM the hybrid exhibition is accompanied by a performance by areare. A performance by Hesun will follow at 9PM, together with a DJ set by Nobel starting at 9.30PM.

The event at STUDIOHOMEAWARENESS is open to the public with admission by registration from 7PM. Entrance is from Via Francesco de Sanctis, 2.