THE WORLD WE SEE WITH OUR EYES IS JUST A REFLECTION OF A REALITY THAT WE CANNOT QUITE GRASP
AURIEA HARVEY
Upstream Gallery is proud to present the exhibition The world we see with our eyes is just a reflection of a reality that we cannot quite grasp by Auriea Harvey (1971, USA) in the gallery’s private viewing space, opening during Amsterdam Art Week 2023.
Auriea Harvey is a digital artist and sculptor living and working from Rome. Through a diverse mixed-media practice, Harvey creates sculpture, simulations, drawings, and mixed reality works in dialogue with the ancient past, bringing light to dark ages. Forms are remade, recovered, and repossessed as Harvey weaves analog and digital elements together, unifying relics with emergent technology. Drawing from her extensive experience in net art and video games, she brings personal narratives and character development to her sculptures. This exhibition focuses on new sculptural works that each consist of multiple digital and physical layers which create an interplay of reflection, meaning and identity. Harvey’s works are often diptychs, in the sense that every work consists of a physical and a digital counterpart, exploring the relation between digital processes and traditional sculpture methods.
The title of this exhibition refers to an ancient story about a man who was tasked to make a painting of a Buddha, when Buddha was still alive, in the sixth century BC. Being completely overwhelmed by Buddha’s divine glow, the artist captured Buddha through its reflection, providing its observer with an intuitive understanding of reality. In line with Buddhist teachings, he realized that the world we see with our eyes is just a reflection of a reality that we cannot quite grasp. This story provides an insight into the power of art, suggesting that a reflection of truth can somehow also be seen as truth,
and that artistic translations can give its viewers enlightened understandings of the world. Harvey was drawn to this specific quote because of its implication that divinity is best seen through its reflection. She thinks artists themselves are a mirror and therefore, every artists’ work is a self-portrait.
This exhibition shows Harvey’s first attempts to reflect on themes of divinity, referring to something that she can’t directly view yet, and so must work her way through these iterations. She’s engaged in an affair with the ancient world and influenced by her past as a video game designer, where she would create holistic experiences, alias “lore” in game culture. Even though Harvey is no longer active as a game-designer, she’s still fascinated by the lore of our world: the artifacts of ancient material culture and their functions, something difficult to lay hold of.
These relics of the past are foundational to Harvey’s work and the coinciding lore . Finally, Harvey wants for the work to speak for itself, like an artifact in a museums’ glass cabinet display. Here, the observer gets to construct their own story.
Upstream Gallery invites you to come and have a peek into Auriea Harvey’s story, works composited from digital sculptures and transformed into bronze, realized through 3D print and traditional lost–wax casting. All works are narrators of Harvey’s exploration into the divine and the relationship between what one can touch and what one feels.
“Creation and destruction are divine. My sculptures are born broken. It is up to me to mend them”
Auriea Harvey
Minomirror I / Mirror v1-dv1 (Minoriea, cancelled)
The centerpiece of this exhibition is a diptych of the digital and physical, consisting of a bronze sculpture and a circular touch–screen. Mirror v1-dv1 (Minoriea, cancelled) reflects Minoriea on-screen, a character whom Harvey considers her digital avatar. The question with 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 grave goods, or belongings buried alongside the deceased, mirrors were covered and re–moved, in an effort to keep said spirit from escaping. Within this work, the reflection of Harvey’s avatar is a similar way of keeping 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 a different, textured, mirror visible that shields Minoriea’s reflection and gains control over yours.
Mirror v1-dv1 is paired with Minomirror I , 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.
24” round touch-screen (diameter 68 cm)
Edition 1 of 3
Auriea Harvey Mirror v1-dv1 (cancelled), 2023 Digital sculpture in coded environment, NFT Dimensions variable
Digital
in coded environment, NFT
Dimensions variable
24” round touch-screen (diameter 68 cm)
Auriea Harvey Mirror v1-dv1 (cancelled), 2023 sculpture
Auriea Harvey
Mirror v1-dv1 (cancelled), 2023
Digital sculpture in coded environment, NFT
Dimensions variable
24” round touch-screen (diameter 68 cm)
Gray Matter II
Gray Matter II, is second in a series of five iterations of this digital sculpture. The first iteration was showcased and for sale on Feral File . Instead of the previous raw gray polygons, this second iteration is crafted from bronze and gold, with a mysterious fire coming from the cyclops eye. Stretched to its limits, the piece reminds one of The Ambassadors, the famous painting by Hans Holbein, due to the curious optical illusion of a skull. In this case, through the touchscreen, you are in complete control of the illusion. Physically, the sculpture is made out of bronze as well, yet treated with green patina and burnished bronze. The 3D printed base it sits on, elaborates on the theme of fire, that is burning inside the three minds of this sculpture.
Harvey affirms the relevance of digital matter in contemporary sculpture by retracing its historical references, such as the echoing of Auguste Rodin’s marcottage , the practice of recombining and reusing different elements of previous works for the formulation of new ones.
Auriea Harvey
Gray
Matter II, 2023Physical: Bronze
Digital: Digital sculpture in coded environment
NFT
Physical: 16.4 x 16 x 15.7 cm
Digital: dimensions variable
5” round touchscreen
2/5 + 2AP
Auriea Harvey
Gray Matter II, 2023
Physical: Bronze
Digital: Digital sculpture in coded environment
NFT
Physical: 16.4 x 16 x 15.7 cm
Digital: dimensions variable
5” round touchscreen
2/5 + 2AP
Auriea Harvey
Gray Matter II, 2023
Physical: Bronze
Digital: Digital sculpture in coded environment
NFT
Physical: 16.4 x 16 x 15.7 cm
Digital: dimensions variable
5” round touchscreen
2/5 + 2AP
Auriea Harvey
Gray Matter II, 2023
Physical: Bronze
Digital: Digital sculpture in coded environment
NFT
Physical: 16.4 x 16 x 15.7 cm
Digital: dimensions variable
5” round touchscreen
2/5 + 2AP
AlleluiaAlleluia+alleluia
Within this work, Harvey seeks to illustrate a spiritual dimension. She believes that we have lost touch with the way in which objects are conduits, or portals, to other realities, filled with presences invisible to the naked eye. Alleluia , or halleluja, is a word in Christianity, used repeatedly during incantation to praise the lord. Harvey is fascinated by the fact that a word is used to bridge the connection between the physical and divine body.
AlleluiaAlleluia+alleluia leaves different impressions, depending on the viewer being inside the viewing room, or looking from the street inside. From the street, the viewer will encounter a single pane of glass reflecting the outer world, breaking with the expected transparency of the window. By doing so, the artist wants to problematice the expectation of seeing–through something. While from inside the viewing room, when light hits the same glass pane, shadows appear to the surface. Furthermore, from the mouth of the strange ‘angel’ on the mantelpiece, a bronze chain emerges with the repeated mantra of alleluia . The angel is composed from one wing of the Victory of Samothrace merged with Harvey herself singing.
Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia, 2023
Bronze 25 x 25.3 x 18.5 cm
2/5 + 2AP
Auriea Harvey
Auriea Harvey
