point of no return

With point of no return, Ryoji Ikeda condenses the unknowable chaos of the event horizon of a black hole into a work of order and balance. Composing a delicate assemblage of basic shapes, sounds, light and shadow, the artist eschews the intricacies of data for a more sculptural approach. While gesturing towards the sublime, the infinite expanse of space and the immense, reality-warping gravitational force of a black hole, he focuses in on the beauty of the physical, bringing together a few simple elements to make sense of something unthinkably complex. Through his own artistic process of playing with space, the artist finds purity in basic structures while drawing inspiration from the vast scope of the universal. “point of no return is a very simple, very intense piece,” he says.

Immaginazione Morta Immagina
Una testa androgina è proiettata come contenuta all’interno di un cubo minimalista. I suoni della testa che respirano lentamente riempiono lo spazio. La testa è serena, in attesa. Improvvisamente una sostanza si riversa su di esso da tutte le parti, inzuppandolo in quello che sembra essere un fluido corporeo. Lo spettatore vuole distogliere lo sguardo ma non può, lo sguardo è costretto attraverso l’invocazione della pulsione scopica. L’orrore per la natura ripugnante della sostanza (l’abietto) è sostituito dal fascino per la bellezza di quello che potrebbe essere considerato un sublime contemporaneo.

Imagination Dead Imagine
An androgynous head is projected as if contained within a minimalist cube. Sounds of the head slowly breathing fill the space. The head is serene, waiting. Suddenly a substance pours over it from all sides, drenching it in what appears to be a bodily fluid. The spectator wants to turn away but can not, the gaze is compelled through the invocation of the scopic drive. Horror at the repulsive nature of the substance (the abject) is replaced by fascination with the beauty of what might be considered a contemporary sublime.

Luz, volume, escala, desorientação, infinitude, ilusão e realidade: estes os vetores da arte da luz como praticada por Doug Wheeler no contexto de um movimento ao mesmo tempo minimalista nos materiais físicos da obra e maximalista quanto à amplitude de sensações provocadas. “Luz e espaço” é o título de uma tendência reunindo artistas em torno interessados na luz surgida na Califórnia nos anos 1960. Piloto de aviões, Doug Wheeler anotou as sensações estimulantes e desnorteantes do vôo; de modo análogo, suas obras “desestabilizam nosso sentido de equilíbrio e nos levam a mover-nos em compasso com a Terra na direção de um horizonte inalcançável”. Outro modo de dizer a mesma coisa é destacar que Doug Wheeler busca a experiência do sublime.

SMSMS-SMS Mediated Sublime

CIMs-Collective Intelligence Machines

“In 2000, I began to connect some of these computers to the mobile phone network (SMSMS-SMS Mediated Sublime, and CIMs-Collective Intelligence Machines). This enabled me to make interactive and multiple installations, connecting various locations.
In this case the flow of images was made visible by large-scale video-projections and the members of the audience were able to modify their characteristics in real time, by sending new inputs to the system from their own phones. This was done in a similar way to certain applications used in electronic democracy. What I had in mind was art which was generative, interactive and public.”

Mirage Gstaad
«Mirage Gstaad de Doug Aitken utilise la fréquence de la lumière pour refléter le sublime paysage alpin dans le cadre d’une rencontre en constante évolution dans laquelle la terre et le ciel, le sujet et l’objet, l’intérieur et l’extérieur sont en constante évolution. Contrastant avec le chalet environnant, la structure de style ranch suggère une version architecturale moderne de Manifest Destiny, la migration vers l’ouest qui a commencé en Europe et s’est finalement installée en Californie. Avec chaque surface disponible revêtue de miroir, il absorbe et reflète à la fois le paysage environnant de telle manière que l’extérieur disparaîtra apparemment tout comme l’intérieur entraîne le spectateur dans un kaléidoscope sans fin de lumière et de réflexion.

Mirage Gstaad
“Mirage Gstaad by Doug Aitken uses the frequency of light to reflect the sublime Alpine landscape as part of a continually changing encounter in which land and sky, subject and object, inside and outside are in constant flux. Standing in contrast to the surrounding chalet’s the ranch-style structure suggests a latter-day architectural version of Manifest Destiny, the westward migration that began in Europe and finally settled in California. With every available surface clad in mirror it both absorbs and reflects the landscape around in such ways that the exterior will seemingly disappear just as the interior draws the viewer into a never-ending kaleidoscope of light and reflection.

Mannequin Death
Jarring and violent yet strangely hypnotizing, the video references the Kantian sublime landscape and the “sex appeal of the inorganic,” which, the Italian philosopher Mario Perniola argues, marks the transition from an organic, bodily sexuality to an inorganic and artificial one.

video

阿尼什•卡普尔
アニッシュ·カプーア
АНИШ КАПУР
Descension
A pool of dark water swirls in a terrifying spiral, never stopping, never emitting light. It looks black and bottomless. It is the whirlpool to end all whirlpools – a spooky mixture of the vortex that sucked down the Pequod and an illustration from Stephen Hawking’s latest work on black holes. Yet this awe-inspiring phenomenon is an exhibit in an art gallery – the latest sublime spectacle from Anish Kapoor.

“Science,Fiction”

Through a combination of the temporal qualities of video and the architectural dimension of its physical installation, Thater’s work explores the artifice of its own production and its capacity to construct perception and shape the way we think about the world through its image. Natural diversity, wildlife, and conservation have been persistent themes in the artist’s work, and she has dedicated herself to an examination of the varied kinds of relationships humans have constructed with animals. While her in-depth studies of ecosystems and animal behavior propose observation as a kind of understanding in itself, her ethical position is implicit in the work, which, while subtly political, provides views of the sublime in all its incarnations—stunning, beautiful, and simultaneously terrifying.

Snake Eyes
Katy Heinlein’s exhibition Snake Eyes challenges the sublime possibilities of symmetry, and indulges in the humor, awkwardness, and flustered physicality that comes with disrupting that symmetry. Heinlein fashions pragmatic materials like wood and aluminum into nimble structures, ready to be wrapped and draped in costumes of brightly colored cloth. Like dressing for a night out, the works take on a very human folly: the effort to conceal, emphasize and seduce.

Geist No.15

“L’art de Lori Hersberger met l’accent sur l’opposition entre le monde de l’illusion et celui de la réalité, tout en faisant allusion à l’espace qui les sépare. En ce sens, ses œuvres sont à la fois sublimes et grotesques – une combinaison qui est également clairement exprimée dans ses expositions actuelles “Lori Hersberger

Fictitious fashion house
“The realistic everyday environment of her studio is reflected in her work and transforms into a sublime dreamlike world. She incorporates elements of nature and space and uses earth tones and natural fabrics.”

МЯО СЯОЧУНЬ
缪晓春
مياو شياو تشون
last judgment in cyberspace (detail)
Printed in black and white. Miao’s photos conceive the celestial as a silvery futuristic tableau that’s enchantingly serene and threateningly industrial. In combining the sublime awe of religious painting with malevolent science fiction theme, Miao uses photography to engage the viewer in an ultra-modern way. In using digital process to create his subject ‘from scratch’, Miao’s photographs authenticate a virtual world rather than document reality. Similar to video game graphics and ‘screen shots’, Miao’s images involve the viewer by casting them as ‘avatars’ within the action.

TranStructures
TranStructures Big cities are unceasingly in motion: growth, decay, changes. São Paulo is the source of my look and thoughts on metropolis. Recompose, redo continuously, from the probable to the improbable, allow us to try infinite possibilities that can lead us from sublime to disaster. Billions of hyperexpressions are induced always at random. The mechanisms that regulate the normal, the pre-established, rupture allowing the appearance of the possible others.

Répertoire#1
A la manière d’un chef d’orchestre, Mourad Merzouki a adapté Têtes d’Affiche pour le mêler à l’intensité de Douar, la force intérieure de In The Middle et l’énergie de Urban Ballet. Dans cette pièce à la frontière des styles, les signatures sont exaltées, chaque esthétique se trouve sublimée. En tricotant les passages les plus forts des pièces de ses confrères avec les siennes, le directeur du Centre chorégraphique national de Créteil contribue à créer la mémoire vive du hip-hop.

Drawing inspiration from Renaissance fresco painting, Adam Cvijanovic’s ‘portable murals’ depict contemporary landscapes with a sense of celestial awe. Spanning 75 feet, Cvijanovic’s Love Poem captures the dreamy and disquieting essence of suburban Americana as a rapturous science fiction tableau. Envisioning sun-bleached L.A. ten minutes after the end of gravity, Cvijanovic’s utopia ascends in a whirlwind of consumerist ecstasy. Emulating movie backdrops as well as the acclivous perspective of cathedral dome tromp l’oiels, Love Poem… combines the sublime horror of disaster films with a majestic religiosity, as bungalows, Broncos, and palm trees are destroyed in the exaltation of their own perfectness. Painted entirely by the artist without assistants, on a plastic used by Fed Ex, Cvijavovic’s work reconstitutes the intimacy of timeless artistry with a modern day immediacy.

Impacts
Tesla coils each fitted with a glass pane and suspended from the ceiling of the exhibition space make up the components of this “live” sculptural installation. The presence of the visitor before each sculptural device activates an audio and visual experience. The visitor’s proximity to the works engages arcs of electricity of variable intensities as well as a rhythmic articulation, generated by the impact of the electrical arc on the glass pane.As a symbolic and sonic source, the Tesla coil’s ability to throw electric arcs has been employed by a wide spectrum of artists. With this new work, Alexandre Burton proposes the use of plasma (loosely defined as an electrically neutral medium of positive and negative particles) as matter and medium itself, circumscribed by a defined frame and articulated through unique programming. In this way, IMPACTS serves as a reminder of the danger and muscle of this marvel while capturing its sublime beauty and rhythmic potential.

CENTIPEDE SUN

Symbol of isolation, doubled by the sublime landscape and the complex spiritual background, the Altiplano region in Chile is the main character in the film. It represents a self-sufficient being, and the film is this being’s portrait. The illustrious landscape keeps traces of a dark past – hidden dangers and gloomy places add a layer of anxiety: the environment is injured. The human element appears briefly in the video: we see traces of human presence being erased by a devouring nature. By means of creating mental landscapes halfway between photographic research and experimental animation, this work depicts a dreamlike world, a vision hidden in a secret dimension of our reality.