Eyeball Massage, Fingers Exercise
21 Nov – 20 Dec 2015
Fergana Art Space, Penang
Just look at that killer GIF. My work ‘Vivian Lee, Social Portrait’ will be part of this group show about art and the internet. Curated by Hoo Fan Chon, who also runs my favorite art space in Penang, Run Amok. More about my portrait of Vivian here.
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FERGANA ART is pleased to present Eyeball Massage, Fingers Exercise group exhibition. This exhibition features works by individuals from diverse background, although not exclusively, by visual artists; featuring installation works, paintings, video works and informal lecture. This exhibition engages the post-internet world as a starting point for a survey, which aims to develop an understanding of its visual system, social media as an alternative platform for artistic expression, the internet as a site for visual aesthetic exploration or how these social media-driven experiences affect artists’ modes of production.
Artist line-up:
Belveen Singh
Engku Iman
Daniel Chong
Gan Chin Lee
Haffendi Anuar
Kenneth Chan
Kuning Pening
Leo Ari
Leon Leong Wai Pung
Sharon Chin
Opening reception:
21 November (Saturday)
2:00pm – 6:00pm
Gallery address:
Lot 14A (first floor),
The Whiteaways Arcade,Lebuh Pantai,
10500 George Town, Penang.
Opening hours: Open daily 11am – 7pm, except on Mondays.
Contact details: +604 261-3002
exhibitions@fergana-art.co
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
As the soft glow of smart devices bathes our faces, our eyes gleam with a blue tinge whilst our fingers swipe mechanically to the next visual stimulus, we live a life of excessive perceptual excitement. The exhibition title Eyeball Massage, Fingers exercise suggests a tropical sensibility; the prohibition of revealing one’s flesh is substituted by the willingness to receive massage by strangers. In this relationship, we become passive as the masseur takes charge of our body, just as we sometimes choose to succumb to the algorithms in social media in deciding which information to consume.
Whilst Post-Internet art has steadily crawled onto the international art circuit, landmark exhibitions have been produced, and critical texts have been circulated amongst the art community, have we missed the opportunity to jump onto the bandwagon or did we just let it slip under our radar and choose to pretend it never happened? Is Post-internet art a misconception, or a super-inflated discourse based on flimsy grounds with little relevance to local socio-political happenings? Are we to adhere to the West’s cultural axis in understanding the post-internet state of mind? If the post-internet reality is a multifaceted one, which each community and individual experiences differently, perhaps this exhibition is an attempt to understand and to make sense of this through the lens of the artists.
This exhibition engages the post-internet world as a starting point for a survey, which aims to develop an understanding of its visual system, social media as an alternative platform for artistic expression, the internet as a site for visual aesthetic exploration or how these social media-driven experiences affect artists’ modes of production.
Curated by Hoo Fan Chon
ANCILLARY PROGRAMME
BOOKFACE: How I hacked social media to be my infopedia
Informal lecture by Daniel Chong
28 November 2015 (Saturday)
2:00pm – 3:30pm
“As the title states, I will be sharing my experience testing Facebook’s possibilities for sharing knowledge instead of stalking ex-partners, learning new things rather than enforcing prejudices, and expanding horizons without leaving home. I have collected hundreds of images and links of many curious and creative themes: art about art, people half submerged in water, movies featuring historical paintings, infographics explaining the world, my artistic creations, racism in Malaysia, new media versus digital media, local flowers, Disney Remixes, computer vision, and more (cats included). These Facebook albums are my attempts to thwart the power of algorithms, and save myself from information overload in a visually saturated world.”