White Noise Fills 214 Projects

The Dallas Art Fair debuts their new exhibit space with a solo show for Belgian artist Emmanuel Van der Auwera.

INTERVIEW BY JORDAN FORD

This March, as part of an expanding outreach initiative, the Dallas Art Fair will launch 214 Projects, an exhibition and project space adjacent to their new offices at River Bend in the Design District. This additional venue will allow Dallas Art Fair exhibitors to present more ambitious gallery installations and special projects on a year-round basis outside of their typical presence during the second week of April.

For their inaugural exhibition, 214 Projects will present White Noise, Belgian artist Emmanuel Van der Auwera’s first solo exhibition in the United States. This project is realized with the full support of Harlan Levey Projects of Brussels, Belgium, who has been an exhibitor with the Dallas Art Fair since 2015. Dallas collector Jordan Ford speaks with the artist and provides a preview of the ambitious and challenging work that will open 214 Projects this spring.

Jordan Ford (JF): We first met when you attended last year’s Dallas Art Fair with Harlan Levey Projects, and I’m thrilled that your first solo exhibition in the US will be here at 214 Projects.

To start, what is the jumping-off point for the title of your show, White Noise? Is there a reference to the familiar ambient background containing “all audible frequencies of vibration” that we recognize from older television sets? Or is it possibly something more or less personal, maybe perhaps novel, to your own work?

Emmanuel Van der Auwera (EVDA): It’s nice to hear from you. I’m pretty thrilled, too! Both of your questions are on point. Yes, a reference to “white noise” as signal processing is absolutely there and yes, it’s not there alone. White Noise is also the title of a 1985 book by Don DeLillo. My last solo exhibition, Everything Now is Measured by After, also borrowed from the American author.

JF: You are presenting two distinct bodies of work in the same venue, yet both contain a certain austere quietness. It may be difficult to be taken in all in one glance. How has your experience presenting them allowed you to create the initial intimate interactions with the artworks themselves?

EVDA: These two bodies of work developed parallel to each other. I’ll present a third type as well, which was made while I was first starting the Memento and VideoSculpture works that you’re referring to. All three are driven by many of the same questions or ideas and were developed in dialogue with each other. They share a documentary approach to thinking about the aesthetics of mass media and certain elements of my methodology. In many ways, there were always intimate interactions between them and often the decisions made with regard to one influenced my thinking about the others.

JF: In these works, both the newsprint memento series and the video sculpture from military battlefield footage, you frame the sourced material by obscuring information as well as revealing previously unseen images. What has this process taught you about how the collective “we” consumes information through selective media? How have you come to understand this through the lens of both consumer and curator?

Emmanuel Van der Auwera, Memento 11 (Barcelona), 2018, newspaper and 3mm aluminum offset plate mounted on aluminum frame, 56.3 x 39 in. Courtesy of the artist and Harlan Levey Projects.

Emmanuel Van der Auwera, VideoSculpture XIV (Shudder), 2017, HD video, 4 LCD screens, and glass, 81 x 46 x 1.2 in., edition of 2. Courtesy of the artist and Harlan Levey Projects.

EVDA: I’m very interested in how, why, and what information is destined for obscurity. That’s a broader theme in my practice. While making these works, I continued collaborations with neuroscientists and technologists, learning to use eye and facial tracking software in my work and investigating the ambiguity between consumer and creator in a bilateral media arena like we’re experiencing today. With or without knowing, our data and experiences shape the images that shape us. Even this idea of a collective “we” is changing constantly. “We the people…” has perhaps always been as divisive as it is unifying. Today we’re in a situation where agency is increasing and, to combat this, forms of oppression are vigorously reappearing.

JF: You seem to be making the viewer commit to a particular position or angle to see the elements of the work. The experience of the artwork elicits complicit positioning to watch the pieces of the sourced media in focus. How does this layering through filters, angles, and reflections change the initial nature of the content? How do these methods of breaking down the established forms of media ultimately reveal what is being re-presented?

EVDA: I do hope that the work reinforces the idea that viewing is not a passive activity where we simply consume and digest. I’ve provided some positions that are more natural than others, but the aim is to liberate a viewer from a single perspective, not to box them into one. If you’re trying to look at something, especially something that isn’t there to begin with, you need to assume different positions/ perspectives and make some effort to read on different levels. Looking is easy. Seeing is hard work. As subject matter, I’ve taken rather voyeuristic material to question political images and how they move through media. Your question is part of what interests me. We don’t see the thing, but do see an image that represents it. Suddenly what is being represented is more important than the actual thing… How to cope with this when the representation is not random, but a very specific and carefully crafted construct born with inherent intent?

JF: Last, what do you hope to see from the American audience? Are there cultural revelations possible from this new set of eyes and ears to your work? Do you have a cheat sheet that allows a viewer to best absorb your viewpoint?

EVDA: Cultural revelations are always possible and sometimes meaningful. If a new audience gives my work their time and attention, I’m very pleased. People are busy. I’ve shown works in Dallas before as well as in Chicago and Miami with my gallery Harlan Levey Projects, and the audience in the US has been fantastic each time. I feel lucky to have this opportunity and hope people will come and exchange with the work and ideas it brings them. In the show, the three types of work are linked by their use of found footage, approach to documentation, and investigation of emotional responses as they differ between viewing and acting. How to act and process media today, how to measure reality, is a topic that seems infinite in the way that climate change does and even more pressing as it forms consensus for the challenges and perceived threats collective society faces.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER: Dallas-based hotelier Jordan Ford is a collector of contemporary and emerging art, with a focus on supporting young artists. Be it painting, video, photography, or sculpture, Ford seeks artwork that challenges perception and initiates dialogue.