For the Alternative Art Guide we chose to present the work of 6 artists who have participated in our project How to make a Delicious Tea, contributing to define a new relation to image as object and notions of reproduction.
The proliferation of images has diluted the specificity in experiencing a discrete locale. A place is no longer understood as a location bound by space-time but forms another domain created by circulating images, one that has been further emphasized with the speed of digital interface. The image facilitates ease of mobility and fluidity of transport between different localities. How to make a delicious tea utilizes the opportunity of the digital image to produce a new creative typology while considering the playful tension in presenting an image as an object. The participating artists acknowledge that the photographic representation of their work may form other tangible substances. A synergy is created through the various artworks combining into a larger whole whereby an image severs from its original and acquires separate existence. The object thus achieves the agency to be multiplied, duplicated and reproduced. How to make a delicious tea extends the idea of the print or artist-multiple, addressing the singularity of the original and the implications of reproduction.
How to make a delicious tea initiates an artistic production marked by subtle and layered processes. The process involves a material space through silk surfaces onto which images manifest. We invite artists to select a photographic representation of a physical work to engage in a process that maps its visual coordinates onto a new spatial condition. Silk as the support for this ‘other space’ evokes a sense of depth and dimensionality with an ephemeral, almost elusive, lightness that reinserts the initial art objects back into our perceptual reality. Here the image is transposed into a tangible formation disconnected from mere representation. We are intrigued by the delicacy of this small shift that creates a new object, with a kind of conceptual blurriness, as it hovers between image and the real.
Hierarchy of value is questioned through the relationship between the image and the silk. From the ethereal and boundless context of the digital it solidifies onto another substance that presumes value and is materially finite. This physical limit forces a momentary loop back to the original, connecting it again to a place and time. However the project sustains this fuzzy connection with the intention that the silk production continues, grows and accumulates, each iteration moving on to a new location to be exhibited, anchored to that place for some time. The accompanying publication is another space in which the image returns to its proliferated condition – onto a paper surface of printed matter – thereby accumulating and circulating parallel to the silk surfaces.
This project has been realized so far in two locations – Artissima Turin and Art Metropole Toronto – with works by Eloise Hawser, Martin Soto Climent, Andrea Sala, Per-Oskar Leu, Patrick Tuttofuoco and Lena Henke. How to make a delicious tea is an ongoing project that will develop through time with additional artist collaborations contributing to its composite process, exhibiting each time in a new context.
Flip Project Space – Federico Del Vecchio & Ala Roushan – Napoli, Italy
FLIP
flip is a platform to expand on various interests in relation to current culture and artistic practice. The projects are the result of our international network and multidisciplinary collaborations. Though formally based in Napoli, Italy, flip is not exclusively committed to this site. Continuous shifts in context invite inputs and spontaneous occurrences that contribute to the multi-layed and transnational discourse that characterizes flip.
Federico Del Vecchio (Naples, 1977) lives and works between Frankfurt, Glasgow and Naples. Del Vecchio is engaged in an independent artistic practice as well as co-curator of flip project space. After finishing his studies at the Academy of Fine Art in Naples, he attended the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, followed by completing the Master in Fine Art at The Glasgow School of Art. He was then at the HIAP – Helsinki International Artist in residence Program supported by 2012 Movin’ Up prize for the mobility of young italian artists abroad. He is the recipient of the Marie Curie Research Fellowship 2015 at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Del Vecchio’s most recent solo and group exhibitions include: I wish I were a Futurist, Jenifer Nails, Frankfurt am Main, DE (2014); Come, All Ye Faithful, curated by Carson Chan, Florian Christopher, Zürich (2013); Turning and Boring, Queen Park Ralway Club, Glasgow (2013); I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now, curated by Marysia Gacek, 109 Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2013); MFA International Show, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2012); Life Jacket under seat, curated by Flip project, Toronto, Canada (2011); Persona in meno, curated by Erica Cooke, Angelique Campers, Chris Fitzpatrick, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin – Palazzo Ducale, Genova (2010).
Ala Roushan (Pittsburgh, 1983) lives and works between Toronto, Canada and Napoli, Italy, engaged in a multidisciplinary practice exploring the potentials and boundaries of design, art and architecture. She is the co-curator of the independent curatorial initiative flip project space. She completed her post-graduate studies from the Städelschule Architecture Class, in Frankfurt, Germany, with a Master of Arts in Advanced Architectural Design under the direction of Prof. Ben van Berkel. Currently, Ala is involved in the academe and teaches Design Studio at Ryerson University, Faculty of Communication and Design in Toronto.
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