Delhi

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Exhibitions

F(r)iction at Kona

Jor Bagh, Delhi

2019

F(r)iction at KONA: An immersive walk-through of multimedia artworks by national and international artists. The temporary exhibition invited the public to dig into the complexities of our lives entangled indichotomies and cross-pollinations between technology, art and nature.

Technology is changing our interactions with what all surrounds us, with nature, with ourselves within it as well as the viewership and creation of art. Thanks to technology also our definition of what art is made us capable of thinking about it in a more dynamic, open-minded

way. It has also increased accessibility to art, making it no longer a realm of the elite. But does the desire for a captivating Instagram picture dilute the reason for art to be? Urban Contemporary Art, St+artIndia's domain, became popular majorly thanks to the social media power, F(r)iction is an occasion to present this movement and its dynamics while presenting different perspectives through the artists' lenses.

Site-specific installations, videos, interactive multimedia pieces and murals transform the venue of Kona – in Jor Bagh Market – into a parallel universe of frictions and fictions, from 16th February until mid-march 2019.

Placed at the centre of the “good vs. bad” debate perennially, the Internet nonetheless plays a fairly important part in our lives today. As its usage continues to grow and reach corners which were previously inaccessible, one is bound to take stock of its effects on us, as a population and our culture. Using the easy accessibility it provides us as a starting point, several artists at F(r)iction engaged with the ramifications of living in an increasingly digital world.

Upon visiting Kona, the public was first greeted by the open-to-multiple-interpretations work of Dutch artist Daan Botlek. In his signature style, the human figure was at the heart of Daan’s work, and as always he made it a point to not ascribe a particular interpretation to his piece.

Daan Botlek - Pass it on & Get Out of my Face. Daan worked on the Jor Bagh Market Façade - Pass it on - , where he constantly tried to rearrange and experiment with ideas by deriving new meanings at each step. His focus remained on the movements and shapes of human body and anatomy that inspired his artwork. Deeply observing the environment around him, he translated his observations into his work, with an aim to create something that acquires a sculptural essence, while being invested with meanings which everyone can reinterpret freely.
Tellas Reveals Friction at Kona 2019 Pranav Gohil 4
Tellas- Spontaneous Garden. Tellas’ research is based on a non-urban aesthetics, his oeuvre illustrates the most organic, personal and intimate visions of the elements of natural landscapes. The artist’s large body of work is characterised by a meditative process that mixes space and shape from which he derives abstracted motifs. Spontaneous Garden – It is part of a series in which Tellas tried to narrate in a direct manner the surrounding nature. Everything comes out from the composition in an organic manner except the colour palette, solely inspired by his mood. For this particular piece the artist has been triggered by the city of Delhi. The capital never stops and its cacophony of constant traffic along with the aromas, colours, noises and the wild nature that occupies each corner of the city is what captivated his creative mind. The dark tunnel aims to immerse the viewer in an organic composition in which surreal enlarged natural elements take over the real space.
Yok Sheryo Kona Exhibition 2019 Pranav Gohil 16
Yok & Sheryo- Temple of Self-Indulgence. It is the year 3001 - almost a century since the suicidal epidemic of the species now known as the “suicide sapiens”. The times preceding the extinction of this last human species have been marked by cultures in rapid decline, denials of climate change, the advent of robot technology and worshipping of false idols. The Temple of Self-Indulgence is a shrine to social media built by a first generation of human internet adopters. It documents the adoration and devotion given to “memes”, “apps”, “fake news” and “selfies”, and the resulting social unrest, extreme narcissism and IQ degradation. A commentary about our contemporary mercurial lifestyles; an era with access to vast knowledge and technology but using only the inconsequential. The temple is watched over by the Nyan cat “cult meme” turned “enlightened guru” who has gained millions of followers over the years. Many come to worship it, while visiting the “Fountain of Narcissism’. The Temple is a commentary about our contemporary mercurial lifestyles; an era with access to vast knowledge and technology but using only the inconsequential.
Brandon Tay-Facade. Brandon has built a reputation out of augmenting the mundane in the fields of animation, real-time computer graphics and projection mapping. Studying the quality of motion and the imitation of natural phenomenon along with the concept of time is what sets the base of the artist’s continuous research. This project – Façade - is an interactive installation that explores and subverts the idea of perspective in the digital age. Taking visual cues from works like the Arnolfini portrait and the WunderKammer (Cabinet of Curiosities), this artwork investigates how we treat screens as mirrors and how these contemporary devices expand and distort our reflections, becoming portals into other landscapes. The installation has sensors that capture your movements. Please stand in the center of the room close to the blank wall for the sensors to catch hold of you accurately. Move as you like and discover which character in the video is mirroring you. Please note that solely two persons at a time can directly interact with the piece.

Placed at the center of the “good vs. bad” debate perennially, the Internet nonetheless plays a fairly important part in our lives today. As its usage continues to grow and reach corners which were previously inaccessible, one is bound to take stock of its effects on us, as a population and our culture. Using the easy accessibility it provides us as a starting point, several artists at F(r)iction engaged with the ramifications of living in an increasingly digital world.

Yoh Nagao Reveals Friction at Kona 2019 Yoh Nagao 1
Yoh Nagao- Stars and Dust Japanese artist Yoh's work deals with the philosophy of ‘‘We the future indigenous’. The artist believes that even though modernisation and economic growth characterise the world today, they are taking place at the expense of our cultural heritages and their diversities. Additionally, the consumption of natural resources is exhausting the planet Earth. Reflecting on this, for his piece at Kona, Yoh took the opportunity of creating his own surreal law in re-thinking lost associations through those images while mapping cultures in the making. A universe of fictions created an open work in which the instinct of "imagination" prevailed. We wish to be stars but the vision is getting dusty not letting us see the future clearly - Where are we heading to in the future? Will our world be dystopian or utopian? Or just extinguished?
Brandon Tay-Facade Brandon Tay’s Façade was an interactive installation that explored and subverted the idea of perspective in the digital age. Taking visual cues from works like the Arnolfini portrait and the WunderKammer (Cabinet of Curiosities), his artwork investigated how we treat screens as mirrors and how these contemporary devices expand and distort our reflections, becoming portals into other landscapes. The installation had sensors that could capture visitors’ movements who could move as they liked and discover which character in the video was mirroring them.
Bigfatminimalist Reveals Friction at Kona 2019 Pranav Gohil 5
Big Fat Minimalist- Untitled The grid is a visual structure that lies at the heart of contemporary art. Coming into prominence first in the 20th century, the use of the grid has evolved over the course of the century, renewed through the eyes of minimalist artists. Prompted by the “organised chaos” that is life in Mumbai, The Big Fat Minimalist created visual narratives using bold patterns, geometric lines and tiles, drawing inspiration from India’s rich cultural history and traditional aesthetics. He expanded the grid in an anamorphic way, taking over the space and directing the flow of visitors into the work. While this flow was free from rules, the artist suggested that we all of us are living in structures which contain our expressions. The artist wished to stimulate new thoughts about our consumption of images from the virtual space of Instagram grid to reality.
Osheen WIP Kona Exhibition 2019 Pranav Gohil 1
Osheen Siva- The Void Osheen Siva’s ‘The Void’ strove to evoke the opposing states of comfort, confrontation, distraction and connectivity to parallel the experience of what it would feel like to be inside the vortex of the internet. Using the private space of the washroom as a dystopian portal, the artist reinvented the space into a site of contemplation and questioning, inviting the public into a larger dialogue of the present ecosystem of dualities and paradoxes — that seemingly coexist gracefully, and yet, in friction.
Marc Lee Reveals Friction at Kona 2019 Pranav Gohil 2
Marc Lee-Echo-location We live in a globalized world that is becoming increasingly homogeneous. Marc Lee’s “Echo-location” dealt with cultural diversity on the Indian continent alongside engaging with the powerful homogenizing forces that are being exerted on this diversity, especially in the social-digital realm. It posed pertinent questions about the meaning of this increasing flattening of forms and images. In Echo-location users could choose any location in India and move through stories posted from there by others on social networks like YouTube and Twitter. These personal impressions were streamed in real time like windows to our changing world. The viewer participated in the social movements of our time and made a journey into a constantly new image and sound collages in which one experienced local, cultural and linguistic differences and more similarities. While engaging with the Internet thematically, it’s hard not to ponder over one of its most important subsets - social media. Courtesy of social media, today the world is more connected than at any other point in history. But what kind of bearing do virtual connections have on interpersonal relationships? This line of thought formed the basis of another set of experiential works at Kona which looked at the impact of social media on our daily conduct, and life at large.
Yok Sheryo Kona Exhibition 2019 Pranav Gohil 16
Yok & Sheryo- Temple of Self-Indulgence Yok & Sheryo’s ‘Temple of Self-Indulgence’ was a shrine to social media built by a first generation of human internet adopters, set in the year 3001 - almost a century since the suicidal epidemic of the species now known as the “suicide sapiens”. The times preceding the extinction of this last human species have been marked by cultures in rapid decline, denials of climate change, the advent of robot technology and worshipping of false idols. Their temple was watched over by the Nyan cat “cult meme” turned “enlightened guru” who has gained millions of followers over the years. Many come to worship it, while visiting the “Fountain of Narcissism’. It documented the adoration and devotion given to “memes”, “apps”, “fake news” and “selfies”, and the resulting social unrest, extreme narcissism and IQ degradation. It was a commentary on our contemporary mercurial lifestyles - an era with access to vast knowledge and technology but one which uses only the inconsequential.
Sajid wajid sheikh- Grey Matter Artist Sajid Wajid’s ‘Grey matter’ was a small window into the infinite which is the artist's imagination, and the endless ocean of new possibilities as he listened to “dhrupad” - the oldest style of music. Entering Grey Matter was a physical experience, where all five senses were tested together in a response to the artist’s work - not the one he chooses to let you see in the virtual fictional space but the one in which he lives here and now.

In an increasingly connected world, where the concepts of globalisation, industrialisation and urbanisation form a major chunk of most headlines today, artists also delved in to engage with what gets left behind in their wake. Dealing with the realities of climate change, loss of cultural heritage, and harm caused in the name of development, their pieces invited visitors to experience the artists’ perspectives on the cross pollination amongst art, culture and technology.

H11235 Reveals Friction at Kona 2019 Pranav Gohil 3
H11235- Habitat With the massive and fast urbanization of Delhi and the loss of habitat, its native flora and fauna have been adversely affected. Nepalese artist H11235’ s piece engaged with how bird species are affected in and around the capital. Once home to a wide variety of species, Delhi is dangerously turning into an un-breathable gas chamber, while retaining huge pockets of jungle within the urban fabric. The photorealistic imagery of a human hand mirroring the vulture on the opposite corner conveyed the dichotomous relationship between humans and the natural world, nested within digital brushstrokes in the background, depicting nature in an abstract manner.
Tan Zi Xi-Floating Cities The Earth has become a detrimental space to live in and artist Tan Zi Xi’s anamorphic mural expressed the idea that our individualistic views may never align to meet a solution on how we should collectively make an impact. Hence, the anamorphic artwork was a play on the idea that mankind will never see eye to eye, and most of what we perceive, is a distorted image parallel to the reality of what Earth is becoming. The installation involved moving from the ‘dystopian Earth’, into a new universe which mankind has created after abandoning Earth that has become inhabitable. The new cities were built in a new universe no longer bound by gravity, connected in linear forms that float diagonally from one to another. The installation hoped to bring the viewer into this fictional universe where the viewer could reflect on the possible outcomes of mankind’s new living spaces in the following centuries.
Transhuman Collective-Phantasmagoria Set in 2070, humans were shown to be wiped out from every form of terrestrial ecosystem in the Transhuman Collective (THC) piece at Kona. Yet, in ‘The Museum of Flora’, the rarest collection of plants still existed in the form of Bonsais. The Ficus Benghalensis - Indian Banyan Tree – attracts a large amount of visitors from all over the globe. They say the Bonsai has a soul which reacts to the human presence. Your curiosity as a typical human being will attract you close to it. Curiosity is eventually what made humans arriving to the discovery of the smallest elementary particle and the fundamental constituent of matter and yet, the knowledge, the potentially full awareness about nature, didn’t stop them to put it at risk. The installation posed a rather perturbing question to the visitors: “The dystopian future of the planet - THC's imagination or a current reality?”

Artists NeSpoon and Tellas created installations with a focus on the increasing number of pleasant encounters we can now access because of technology. Their works immersed visitors in experiences that sparked joy and allowed for a positive interpretation of change.

NeSpoon- Delhi Polish artist NesPoon’s installation at F(r)iction was inspired by a tree she saw at a Polish beach in the winter of 2009. A complex weft made by the artist, as intricate as our lives and nature is, embraced the viewer. Her signature lace composed the net - giving to this practice new life and new possibilities, to experience a unique softness.
Tellas Reveals Friction at Kona 2019 Pranav Gohil 4
Tellas-Spontenous Garden Italian artist Tellas’ work titled ‘Spontaneous Garden’ was an attempt to narrate in a direct manner the surrounding nature of his piece. For this artwork, the artist used the city of Delhi as inspiration - the capital never stops and its cacophony of constant traffic along with the aromas, colours, noises and the wild nature that occupies each corner of the city is what captivated his creative mind. The dark tunnel aimed to immerse the viewer in an organic composition in which surreal enlarged natural elements took over the real space.

With several thought-provoking takes on the interaction amongst many almost-omnipresent elements today i.e. technology in conversation with art and culture, F(r)iction culminated with an abstract composition created by the Indian artist duo of Do & Khatra.

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