MIXED FEELINGS
Frank Ammerlaan, Marc Bijl, Kévin Bray, Harm van den Dorpel, Mandy Franca, David Haines, Auriea Harvey, Jen Liu, Noor Nuyten, Ronald Ophuis and Tabor Robak
1 JULY - 5 AUGUST 2023
MIXED FEELINGS
Upstream Gallery is proud to present Mixed Feelings, a group exhibition featuring the new developments in the work of several artists who explore in various materials and techniques, the ambiguous attitude one can harbor towards technological advancements.
In a fast changing world, progression and regression go hand in hand. Where some of the artists in this exhibition explore the endless possibilities that new technologies bring, like AI and NFT, and celebrate those progressions, others are emphasizing the flipside of these developments. Think of the increasing alienation between humans and the natural world and the resulting climate crisis, exploitation in industrial labor, and digital exhaustion.
This exhibition invites you to explore the multi–dimensional and often contradictory experiences that arise from our relationship with technology, encouraging one to reflect and re–evaluate the meaning of human connection in the digital age.
TABOR ROBAK (1986, USA)
Tabor Robak is a Paris–based artist, who employs the visual vocabulary of contemporary video games and consumer culture to interrogate the role of technology within society. Using the latest digital tools, his work explores how socio–technological forces and then cultural economy mold our inner cognitive–emotional landscapes.
In recent months, Tabor Robak has been meticulously crafting a series of images, each constructedby editing together hundreds of AI–generated images into a larger composition. His goal is to explore the mixed feelings he harbors towards AI as a creative tool and encapsulate these sentiments within the artwork.
The artwork Nuke (2023) portrays a zoomed–out view of futuristic drug paraphernalia, tech items, and assorted brand insignias. This work is inspired by the recurring theme of fictional drugs in science fiction, such as Soma in “Brave New World” or Substance D in “A Scanner Darkly”. In this piece, Robak is pondering the potential risks associated with AI usage, likening it to drug addiction. The artist imagines that an overreliance on such technologies could lead to a creatively stoned and stunned culture, indirectly imprinting “big–tech” on our identities, ideas, and cultural contributions.
Tabor Robak
Nuke (2023)
Print between dibond and plexiglass, framed 150 x 165 cm
Edition of 3 plus 2 artist’s proofs (#1/3)
I can remember a few things, 2022 Gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic gouache, and handmade acrylic metallic
I think of breakfast, and my Gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic gouache, metallic
Jen Liu
paint on paper, framed 88.5 x 59.25 cm
Jen Liu
paint on paper, framed 88.5 x 59.25 cm
mind is blank, 2022 gouache, and handmade acrylic framed
Jen Liu
I A half-heard sound, an indefinable feeling, 2022 Gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic gouache, and handmade acrylic metallic paint on paper, framed 88.5 x 59.25 cm
JEN LIU (1976, USA)
Jen Liu is a visual artist who works with video, choreographic performance, biomaterial and painting, to explore topics of national identity, gendered economies, neoliberal industrial labor, and the re–motivating of archival artifacts.
Her latest body of work is about the reality of today’s migrant labor, industrial and data labor outsourced to the global south in the 21st century. They are pure productivity for the sake of cheap consumer goods, trapped in small rooms, freedom excluded.
The paintings on paper share the theme of being trapped inside closed structures. Here, the closed structures are the paintings themselves, bodies and objects emerging from cartoon holes embedded in surfaces of shimmering gold and pink.
While this body of work reflects on the increasingly challenged political context of a long term body of work, Pink Slime Caesar Shift , it is also a reflection on a collective state of isolation we’ve been in the last couple years. Disattached from our physical bodies, our electrified images flitting over multiple screens, can we still remember, or even ask, who we are? Bound to be isolated, kept in hiding– keywords that are fitting to the women working in factories in the global south. These paintings refer to the exploitation of women who produce a specific type of product for the worldwide market in isolation. Ironically, these products seem to facilitate isolation in their essence: technical hardware.
AURIEA HARVEY (1971, USA)
Auriea Harvey is a digital artist and sculptor, with a diverse mixed–media practice. Harvey has a background and extensive experience in net art and video games, wherein she’d create holistic experiences. Harvey combines sculpture, simulation, drawings and often, diptychs, unifying relics with emergent technology. These diptychs create both a physical and digital interpretation or counterpart of the work. By doing so, Harvey explores the relation between digital processes and traditional sculpting methods. Her works are in dialogue with the ancient past, bringing light to dark ages.
For this show, she brings in another diptych. Mirror v1–dv1 (Minoriea, canceled) reflects Minoriea on–screen, a character whom Harvey considers her digital avatar. The question raised by a virtual reflection is what it reflects, if not the “real”, or physical world? Within the virtual world, any type of world can be created, viewed and experienced.
With buried grave goods, mirrors were covered and removed, in an effort to keep spirits from escaping. Within this work, the reflection of Harvey’s avatar functions in a similar way, to keep her inside Harvey’s world of creation. On the large touchscreen, you may see your reflection layered over Minoriea and as you spin the mirror, her reflection becomes yours. This also makes visible a different, textured, mirror, that shields Minoriea’s reflection to gain control over yours.
Mirror v1–dv1 (2023) is paired with Minomirror I (2023), which depicts the same character in a new guise. Within the bronze mirror, the reflection is warped. The back of the mirror shows an unsolvable labyrinth, which functions, again, as a way of canceling the mirror. The viewer can’t get to the center of one’s own reflection.
Auriea Harvey Minomirror, 2023 Bronze 24 x 6.5 x 50 cm Edition of 3 (#1/3)
Auriea Harvey
Mirror v1-dv1 (cancelled), 2023 digital sculpture in coded environment, NFT, 24” round touchscreen, Beelink SER Mini-PC dimensions variable Edition of 3 (#1/3)
DAVID HAINES
David Haines’ paintings are predicated upon skilfully rendered archetypal narratives following in the wake of abstraction, conceptual art and photography. For the past years he has been developing a body of new work that ties itself to the gravity of painting within the context of the new information age and overloaded digital image culture. Invested in the history of European painting, Haines has arrived at a language for painting, which not only speaks to the ancestor spirits of Holbein, Hals and Vermeer but is also fully grounded in our current society driven by images and (technological) consumerism.
The paintings follow the logic of representing where the human condition is negotiated and transacted through the LCD screen. The influence of the screen within the history of classical art roams freely in this work, screens that reveal images and conceal their making, screens which shimmer with patchworks of sumptuous brushwork and glazed oil filled surfaces that reflect.
Signal (2023) explores one of the most widely reproduced online images depicting an infected human eye. Haines reproduces this image as two panel paintings, implying two seemingly identical left eyes, positioned side by side. This deliberate arrangement signals to its slight material disparities and unique qualities. The exhausted gaze that is understood from the artwork, not only reflects the societal malaise of our time, but also underscores the significance of tangible encounters in a world saturated by an overwhelming, constant surplus of digital visual stimuli.
David Haines
Signal, 2023
Oil on wooden panels
2 x 20 x 20 cm
FRANK AMMERLAAN (1979, NL)
Frank Ammerlaan makes use of unconventional materials ranging from dirt and dust to (liquid) metals and meteorite particles. Ammerlaan can be seen as a contemporary alchemist, researching perception, the boundaries of painting, the unpredictable and unrepresentable processes. Central to his practice is the desire to capture the constant flux of our reality. This moves beyond our individual lives and into eternal as ethereal processes on a cosmic scale.
His chemicals on canvas series originated from research he did with chemists and scientists for a number of years. Ammerlaan physicalized the phenomenal aesthetics of the organic color arrangements – visible on an urban rainy day – in the form of oil spills. He first blackens his canvases with acrylic paint, then deposits them in a bath of water with an undisclosed mixture of chemicals, from which they emerge with stunning iridescent color effects. The result is extremely detailed, holographic, hallucinatory, and toxic.
Much like an algorithm, Ammerlaan provides the conditionings, but can never predict the outcome. This obvious dependence on chance highlights a certain uncontrollability. Throughout his work, Ammerlaan seeks for the contact point between nature and culture. Technology and science drives humankind’s ambition for order and control within the natural world and its encompassing chaos. The oil leaks can be understood to point this out exactly, representing the spills coming out of the Anthropocene, such as the climate crisis.
Frank Ammerlaan Untitled, 2022
Chemicals on canvas, framed 150 x 120 cm
Ronald Ophuis
Young Goat, 2023
Oil on canvas 40 x 50 cm
RONALD OPHUIS (1968, NL)
Ronald Ophuis is a painter, who’s paintings uphold a tension between attraction and repulsion: they contain beauty but cause a shudder at the same time. With his distinctive paint treatment and meticulous compositions, Ophuis strategically makes use of that which the medium and aesthetics of oil painting offer him. Yet the subjects of his choosing are usually confrontational, asking the viewer to take a stance on what is depicted. Through the power of painting, Ophuis challenges the viewer to relate to the content of the work.
In his latest work, the artist takes on the alienation felt between humankind, animals and the environment. He does so by painting the things that come most natural to us, as human beings.
This resulted in Young Goat (2023) and Flowers (2018–2023). Ophuis depicts a change and puts these subjects precedently in the past, to transform them into a disappearing archetype that stimulate questions concerning our relationship towards these subjects. One could ask, what is still left of our one-on-one connection to animals and the natural environment, outside of contemporary farms and technology driven companies?
Flowers, 2015-2023
Oil on canvas
50 x 40 cm
Ronald Ophuis
Ronald Ophuis Flowers, 2018-2023 Oil on canvas 50 x 40 cm
MANDY FRANCA (1989, NL)
Mandy Franca is a multidisciplinary artist, who subverts and challenges the traditional application of printmaking by experimenting with a range of artistic mediums which intersect painting, photography, print, drawing, collage, video, sculpture and installation. The photographic image, made with her smartphone, and mark making are recurring elements, through which she explores experimental forms of print.
Her research encompasses the influence of the digital realm on artifacts, mundanity and the influence of migration. Drawing from life experiences which are informed by growing up in a cross– cultural environment, Franca looks at contemporary artifacts in the broadest sense of the word; personal archives, images, memes, emojis, photographs, videos, audio etc. Working through different media, Franca explores the continuous circulation of these artifacts, both online and offline, their interconnectedness and the desire to slow the experience of time – to better preserve important moments and places in memory.
The presented artwork is part of the series An Area of Land Dominated by Trees , where Franca draws inspiration from the opening sentence of Wikipedia’s description of a “Forest”.
In Fluttering Leaves Make the Wind Blow I , she examines diverse realities and forms of intelligence that extend beyond humanity, encompassing contemporary technology and the natural world in a more-than-human context. The application of layering in her work is to display the complexity that makes up the present. With these techniques Franca wants to challenge ideas of digital materiality, painting and the reproductive image.
Mandy Franca
Fluttering Leaves Make the Wind Blow I, 2023 Oil pastel on giclee
112 x 148 cm
NOOR NUYTEN (1986, NL)
Noor Nuyten creates conceptual works that appeal strongly to the imagination of the viewer. Nuyten is artistically akin to the movement of conceptual artists from the late 1960’s, however at the same time her work is undeniably contemporary.
While scrolling on your smartphone a cosmic ray can strike the Earth’s atmosphere, creating cascades of subatomic particles including energetic neutrons, muons and pions, beating your screen to create a bitflip, manifesting in a glitchy phone. Without realizing it, you have experienced a cosmic ray attack, creating a bitflip in your smartphone. In the future, cosmic bit flipping will happen more often because processors become smaller and more energy efficient.
For Gazing Bitflips (2023) Nuyten started to detect and collect bitflips with a smartphone turned into a pocket detector, discovering lit pixels caused by cosmic rays on a daily basis. It is a first attempt to get bitflips off the screen, by melting and solidifying the exact moment of a cosmic strike on a smartphone. The outcome reminds one of a dazzling galaxy; the home of the cosmic rays. Providing us with an interesting insight in the overlap of the physical and the digital.
This new body of work is made of shredded, melted and pressed production waste of Dutch designer Joris Laarman and e– waste, developed in collaboration with Stefania Petroula and circular company van Plestik. In imagining a transition towards more liveable futures, inspired by thinkers like Donna Haraway, Nuyten believes in the power of rethinking materials. By blending used materials, mundane objects and gestures, her aim is to spark the imagination of the viewer, evoking new thoughts, questions and realities.
Noor Nuyten
Gazing Bitflips - 14:55, 2022
Shredded, melted and pressed e-waste and production waste of Dutch designer Joris Laarman
Framed
90 x 70 cm
Unique piece
Noor Nuyten
Gazing Bitflips - 00:05, 2022
Shredded, melted and pressed e-waste and production waste of Dutch designer Joris Laarman
Framed
90 x 70 cm
Unique piece
Less they touch the ground and more they decide for it, 2023
Digital print on canvas
100 x 150 cm
Unique piece
Kévin Bray
KÉVIN BRAY (1989, FR)
Kévin Bray is a French interdisciplinary artist, who was initially trained as a graphic designer and quickly cultivated his practice as an independent artist within the contemporary art arena.
Bray moves across various disciplines and mediums with ease, overstepping their boundaries and intents. A large part of Bray’s practice revolves around the creation of paintings and the continual evolution of his video Morpher (2018 – ongoing).
Logically, through his work process, experimentation with tools plays a large role, pushing them towards a state of crisis. Bray is conscious of the authority (technological) tools have, in terms of creating interdependency between the user and the tool, as creating similar cycles of production between users. Bray tries to break out of these dogmatic cycles that start to determine methods of creation. By always looking for ways to confront and create new narratives, he aims to open and diversify language while pushing the edges of its possibilities. Due to this reflective yet productive approach, Bray provides us with an efficient and sustainable way of image making that gives us insight in the manufacturability of life in general.
For this exhibition Kévin Bray created two digital paintings titled It is commodifying the depth for the growth of others (2023) and Less they touch the ground and more they decide for it (2023), in which he collects and layers historical narratives that still resonate today as insights to our present day challenges. He tries to simultaneously draw from knowledge situated in historical and traditional artistry, for example trompe l’oeil , as well as techniques of our contemporary image–making industry and popular culture. The outcome is a complex collage that sits somewhere in–between a traditional painting, an AI generated image and a 3D sculpture.
Kévin Bray
It is commodifying the depth for the growth of others, 2023
Digital print on canvas
120 x 110 cm
Unique piece
HARM VAN DEN DORPEL 1981, NL)
H arm van den Dorpel is an artist who continuously seeks to discover emergent aesthetics by composing software and language. With a background in computer science, he often brings elements of advanced mathematics and other scientific fields into his practice. Van den Dorpel engages with diverse materials and forms, including works on paper, sculpture, computer–generated graphics, and software, through which the works are continuously evolving, informed by feedback loops and the design of algorithmic systems.
His newest NFT project, is a commissioned work by car brand Mercedes–Benz, called Maschine Here, van den Dorpel chose motion, velocity, and perception as core themes. Each unique artwork depicts a mesmerizing radial pattern of complex and constantly changing illusions that occur when certain objects spin and accelerate. The artist created and trained a neural network to identify and select generated outputs in line with his own artistic preferences. Even though van den Dorpel is experienced in utilizing A.I. in his work, employing both a custom neural network and creating an entirely 3–dimensional image is a first for him.
Movements such as the Futurists or the Vorticists, inspired by early technological advances in the 20th century, embraced a one– zsided approach, believing in the capacity for technology to liberate. Van den Dorpel, however, views technology as something that may as well move us forward, but it may also move us backward, perhaps even at the same time. These seemingly contradictory forces are something he animates through his work.
Harm van den Dorpel
Maschine7, 2023
Handconfigured generative and interactive animation, NFT (excl. hardware)
Variable dimensions
Unique piece from a series of 1000, token #7/1000
Watch Maschine7 in movement here
Harm van den Dorpel
Maschine5, 2023
Handconfigured generative and interactive animation, NFT (excl. hardware)
Variable dimensions
Unique piece from a series of 1000, token #5/1000
Watch Maschine5 in movement here
MARC BIJL (1970, NL)
Marc Bijl is a highly versatile artist, who switches as effortlessly between political activity and street culture as he does between the media of image, text and music. He researches, questions and criticizes global themes such as political power, globalization of the economy and nationalism.
In his latest works, Bijl hints at the crises from the 1980s. The artist notes that this was a time of large uncertainty and dystopian predictions of what the future holds. The fantasies of the future around that time, think George Orwells’ 1984, were determined by the Cold War, and the worldwide tension in general. In response, Bijl states that at least the soundtrack to this dystopia was great. This juxtaposition comes back in his work, as he often refers to (musical) periods at large, wherein he then highlights the doom and gloom of the particular.
In OFF WORLD (2022) and Together in electric dreams (2022), two slightly mysterious works, the old and new come together in a smooth industrial and digital finish. Some might connect it to the Vaporwave genre, which, much like Bijl’s interest and methodology, is characterized by 1980s and 1990s subculture, as well as the both surrealist and sarcastic perspective on popular culture and consumerism. The work generates feelings that are both forward–thinking, and simultaneously, nostalgic. Bijl’s retro–futurism explores the tension between past and future, between the alienating and empowering effects of technology.
Marc Bijl
OFF WORLD, 2022
Powder coating and digital print on aluminium
70 x 100 cm
Unique piece
Marc Bijl
Together in electric dreams, 2022
Powdercoating and digital print on aluminium 100 x 70 cm
Unique piece
Kloveniersburgwal 95 1011 KB Amsterdam t. +31 (0)20 4284284 e. info@upstreamgallery.nl
