Aesthetica Art Prize Exhibition A presentation of selected works from 18 contemporary artists
Free guide to the artworks 13 March - 5 July 2020 aestheticamagazine.com/artprize Image: Patty Carroll, Mad Mauve, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.
Aesthetica Art Prize Exhibition 13 March - 5 July 2020 The Aesthetica Art Prize is a celebration of works that redefine the parameters of contemporary art. The annual prize, now in its 13th year, provides a platform for both established and emerging practitioners from across the globe, supporting and enhancing their careers through exhibition, publication and talent development. The 2020 exhibition includes 18 artists that respond to today’s key issues, unpacking the layers of our digitalised, globalised planet. The featured projects ask poignant questions about what it means to be a human today. How has the selfie altered our sense of personal identity? What value do we place on being individuals? What are the consequences of altering weather patterns? Across painting, photography, sculpture, video and installation, these immersive works are part of a wider line of enquiry into our changing world. The featured projects span the UK, USA, Gibraltar, Japan and Mexico. The jury comprises influential art figures, including curators, academics and artists whose expertise spans all media: Ameena M. McConnell (Independent Curator, Entrepreneur & Artist); Andreas Gegner (Co-Director, Sprueth Magers); Dr. Beatrice Bertram (Senior Curator, York Art Gallery); Cherie Federico (Co-Founder & Managing Director, Aesthetica); Claire Catterall (Senior Curator, Somerset House); Damon Jackson-Waldock (Deputy Curator, Yorkshire Sculpture Park); Diane Smyth (Writer, Editor & Curator); Dryden Goodwin (Artist & Professor, Slade School of Fine Art); Eliza Williams (Editor, Creative Review); Dr Ope Lori (Artist & Director, PILAA); Pierre Saurisse (Lecturer, Sotheby’s Institute of Art); Sarah Allen (Assistant Curator, Tate Modern); Shasti Lowton (Curator & Art Consultant); Yuen Fong Ling (Artist, Curator & Senior Lecturer, Sheffield Hallam).
Andreas Lutz Soft Takeover (2019) www.andreaslutz.com Andreas Lutz’s work refers to alternative human–machine interactions. In recent projects, he analyses and reveals the phenomenon of perception versus reality – the principles of abstract aesthetics through audio-visual installations. The creation of experimental soundscapes and the relation of semiotics are further aspects of his practice. Lutz has exhibited at the Antarctic Pavilion during the 57th Venice Biennale (Italy), the National Art Center Tokyo (Japan) and HeK Basel (Switzerland).
Andres Orozco Raw series (2019) www.aozphotography.com Andres Orozco is a fine art architectural photographer, living and working in New York City. His practice highlights the ways in which geometry, colour and composition define a new relationship between humans and urban spaces. Raw is a photo-based series that suggests we are living in a world of our own creation. It uses lighting interventions to transform locations – reshaping colours and textures into ethereal tableaux. These environments recall the aesthetics of early science-fiction cinematography.
Bill Posters (Barnaby Francis) & Daniel Howe Big Dada (2019) www.billposters.ch | www.rednoise.org/daniel Big Dada consists of six “deep fake” new media works featuring synthesised personas of Marcel Duchamp, Marina Abramović and Mark Zuckerberg, amongst others. Big Dada was inserted into Instagram as a “digital intervention” and went viral, leading to official responses from Facebook and Instagram regarding their policies on new computational forms of power and propaganda. Big Dada is an extension of the Spectre installation, which interrogates the social and ethical implications of Dataism, Psychopolitics and Surveillance Capitalism.
Chris Yuan Counterfictions (2019) www.chriszhongtianyuan.com Chris Yuan works with video, fiction, sound, architecture and performance. His practice looks into the web of human construction, nature and mythology. Counterfictions uses Donald Trump as a starting point, building a fictional wall in the public imagination. The work explores alternative realities of ecological collapse after the construction of Trump’s border proposal. The story starts with a journalistic comment on the wall, and ends with a myth of biologists tracking a genetically mutated species along the US–Mexico border.
Christiane Zschommler Project Fear series (2019) www.christianezschommler.co.uk Christiane Zschommler was born in East Berlin and has lived in the UK since 1992. She creates images by obscuring the content, reducing them to fundamental shapes. Project Fear explores the communicative function of knowledge. It obscures the text from published studies about the impact of Brexit from 2015 to 2017. The significance of removing the text is that viewers are left to reflect upon the meaningless rhetoric of Brexit. There is a sense of tension between illegible written evidence and sound collages of political speeches.
Sound collages in collaboration with Anna Power
Christopher Stott Ampro Precision Projector, Nine Cameras, Nine Clocks (2019 / 2020) www.chrisstott.com Christopher Stott’s work depicts vintage technologies that have been transformed from ordinary objects into symbols and icons. Stott paints a wide variety of appliances, turning them into new compositions that encourage an intimate, slower viewing experience. Using a subdued palette, Stott has a unique, recognisable approach. Precise rendering is balanced with delicate, painterly brushwork. This work has its finger firmly on the pulse of contemporary representational painting.
Emmy Yoneda Inherited Landscapes (2019) www.emmyyoneda.com Emmy Yoneda is a “collision of cultures”. Her father is from Osaka and her mother is from Glasgow. She has been raised with two cultural identities. The exploration and influence of this dual heritage is integral to her practice. Her work exists in the space inbetween – one which she refers to as “placelessness”. Yoneda captures memories in the form of moving image: brief encounters with the landscapes of Japan and Scotland, shown side by side. The dialogue allows room for contemplation and reflection.
Erik Deerly Dysmorphia (2018) www.erikdeerly.com Erik Deerly is a visual and sound artist, as well as an Associate Professor of New Media at Indiana University Kokomo. His work includes sound, installation, video, photography and Net.art. Over the last decade, Deerly has focused on time-based compositions as an investigation of alternative narratives. These have been created solely by a deliberate manipulation of otherwise extraneous content. In Dysmorphia, he further explores those possibilities, whilst representing the moving image in a purely two-dimensional form.
Fragmentin Displuvium (2019) www.fragment.in Fragmentin is an art practice based in Lausanne, Switzerland, run by three ECAL alumni: Laura Perrenoud, David Colombini and Marc Dubois. At the crossroads of art and engineering, Fragmentin’s work questions the impact of the digital age, investigating technology’s disposition towards control and opacity. Displuvium is a research project that examines the controversial practice of “cloud seeding”. The installation has been created and developed with designer Renaud Defrancesco.
Geoff Titley Decomposition series (2018) www.geofftitley.com Decomposition is an inevitable stage within each and every organic cycle. It is the process by which substances are eventually broken down into simpler organic matter. Disintegration and decay have provided the inspiration for Geoff Titley’s photographic series, which questions the impact of digital technology on our perception of the world. The artist poses new ideas about the disruption of natural cycles, suspending objects mid-air against block-colour backgrounds. Titley has a studio in London with Bow Arts.
Kenichi Shikata cradle of light series (2019) www.shikatakenichi.com Kenichi Shikata was born in Kyoto. The artist creates sculpture and photography using geometric patterns. Shikata’s work engages with space through light and shadow. The project uses light to express concepts of presence and absence. Through an inner void, light pours in and offers a beautiful shadow as a mix of forms and shapes. In Japan, the phenomenon of light between leaves is called “Komore-bi”. This concept can be seen here – through the use of industrial materials. Shikata has exhibited at the 28th UBE Biennale.
Laura Besançon Alone, Together (2018 - present) www.laurabesancon.com Central to Laura Besançon’s practice are notions of play, connectivity and place. Alone, Together documents a participatory experiment with residents living in high-rise buildings. Individuals were asked to turn their lights on and off to a song at a certain date and time. The residents participated without knowing each other, utilising letters, light and music as the base of communication and creation. The project was sparked by the artist’s desire to connect with her surroundings and the concept of neighbourhood.
Natalia García Clark Self Portrait (2017) www.nataliagarciaclark.com Natalia García Clark is a conceptual artist from Mexico City. Her practice uses simple gestures to point out contradictions in the power structures that govern western societies. Rather than elucidating these juxtapositions, she uses an array of mixed media to materialise her lack of understanding about them. In this video, the artist appears and eventually disappears as she walks away from the camera. A sense of measurement is key in the spectator’s ability to count the number of steps it takes before the figure melts into the distance.
Oliver Canessa Invitation to Untitled (2020) www.olivercanessa.com Inspired by an earlier installation, Untitled, Oliver Canessa invites the viewer to experience the ambiguous and familiar command of manmade sounds from popular instant messaging software. The installation draws attention to the semiotic power of brief high-pitched tones – their temporality and the inevitable anxiety produced from the expectations of late capitalism. The piece navigates the digital world as a mixture of guilt, alienation and cognitive overload.
Patty Carroll Anonymous Women: Demise series (2018) www.pattycarroll.com This is a series of studio installations made for the camera, delighting viewers with a playful critique of domesticity and excess. Patty Carroll conjures imaginary worlds about women and their wider identity within the home. The series depicts an anonymous figure who is overwhelmed by possessions, tasks, obsessions and décor. These images provide a humorous yet critical look at how women continue to strive for perfection in their homes and selves – an unending, frustrating and ultimately fruitless endeavour.
Pernille Spence & Zoë Irvine Bob & Sink (2018)
Bob & Sink follows the journey of a group of oranges as they pass through rivers and streams. The oranges meet with obstacles, move around them and progress on their way. They are a foreign body – buoyant and immersed – yet separate. They are in suspension but floating in a community, swirling through pools, bouncing down waterfalls and disappearing into tunnels and underground channels only to re-emerge further downstream. Gravity pulls them on. They are perpetually in motion.
Rhea Storr A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message (2018) www.rheastorr.com Carnival has provided fertile ground on which to consider cultural representation, masquerade and the performance of black bodies. Rhea Storr’s work is concerned with the ability of 16mm film to speak about black and mixed-race identities. She explores moments of tension where images break down, meet a resistance or are themselves resistive. Images that fail to articulate what they represent, or don’t tell the whole story, provide significant starting points. Storr also organises an analogue film lab, not/nowhere, in London.
Stephanie Potter Corwin Murmurations #23: 10,000 selfies (with a pink wall in Los Angeles) (2019) www.stephaniepottercorwin.com Stephanie Potter Corwin uses data as a framework to investigate the intersections of perception, expectation and self-awareness. Murmurations is a series of abstract visualisations inspired by flocking patterns. Made entirely from selfies, the series explores how social media is influencing behaviour. Using a bespoke algorithmic process, Murmurations #23 utilises over 10,000 publicly posted selfies taken in front of the Paul Smith boutique in Los Angeles.
AESTHETICA ART PRIZE submit your work Win £5,000 & group exhibition
DEADLINE 31 AUGUST 2020 aestheticamagazine.com/artprize Image: Kenichi Shikata, waft eyes, from the series cradle of light. Courtesy of the artist.
PUBLIC Programme Led by artists and curators, Aesthetica’s public programme offers an insight into current themes in the art world, engaging with the shortlisted pieces and discussing the role that art prizes play within talent development. Talks begin at 12:30
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F riday 13 March Meet the Artists The 2020 shortlist will be in attendance to discuss their works and the wider themes. The artists will speak about the concepts and techniques used in the shortlisted pieces, spanning a range of media including photography, installation, video, sculpture and painting. Hear directly from those that have shaped this year’s prize and how they are navigating today’s artistic landscape.
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T hursday 23 April Curator’s Insights Griselda Goldsbrough, Co-Curator of the Aesthetica Art Prize, will discuss the opportunities that prizes present for practitioners to reach wider audiences. What are their benefits beyond the prize money? In this informative session, Goldsbrough looks at how competitions further talent development, expanding on the selection process and the shortlisted works as a testbed for ideas.
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Thursday 18 June What is the Power of a Photograph? Photography is omnipresent in daily life. It is the vernacular of our times and the most immediate form of communication. What constitutes a successful image and how do photographers express meaning? Cherie Federico, Director and Curator of the Aesthetica Art Prize, draws from the works in this year’s exhibition, discussing aesthetics, form and concept.
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