Warren Neidich
dal 31/1/2002 al 2/3/2002
Segnalato da
31/1/2002
Warren Neidich
mullerdechiara, Berlin
This exhibition is the first one-person show of the New York/Los Angeles based photo/video artist in Germany. His "Camp O.J." installation has recently toured at the Bayly Art Museum, Charlottesville and the Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California. Neidich whose works have also recently been exhibited at the Whitney Museum, NYC will show four projects in Berlin.
some stories concerning the mutated observer
This exhibition is the first one-person show of the New York/Los Angeles
based photo/video artist in Germany. His "Camp O.J." installation has
recently toured at the Bayly Art Museum, Charlottesville and the Laguna Art
Museum, Laguna Beach, California. Neidich whose works have also recently
been exhibited at the Whitney Museum, NYC will show four projects in
Berlin: "Shot-Reverse-Shot/Memorial Day"; "Beyond the vanishing point, L.A.";
"Remapping" and "Being Prada Seen".
In his photo and video works Warren Neidich explores the complex relations
between architecture, film and photography and the role these have played in
the construction of a "mutated observer".
In his works the artist puts emphasis on questions of perception; Neidich¹s
art projects are to be understood as contributions to a term he invented
called neuro-aesthetic theory. In this context Neidich refers to ideas of
the American critic Frederic Jameson. According to Jameson we are living a
radical mutation in built space itself brought on most recently by the
effect of new technology. Space becomes more and more a complex immaterial
relational space. By relational space he means the space of cyberspace where
an individual may be communicating with a person in the same room and across
the globe simultaneously as well as the reconfigured architectural space in
which multiple contexts are experienced at the same time. The evolution of
the human subjects who happen into this new space has not kept pace with
that evolution: as yet, no equivalent mutation in the subject has followed
the mutation in the object. According to Neidich's take on Jameson, we do
not possess the perceptual equipment and neural configurations, called
neural networks, to match this new relational space.
Part one of this exhibition examines the history of visualizing
technologies, of which virtual reality is but the most recent, that each
culture invents to make optical the various invisible and immaterial
relations that are responsible for its creation such as political comedies,
sociologic hierarchies, historical trends as well as aesthetic styles.
"Shot-Reverse-Shot" displays five couples in the act of communication.
However their speaking has been replaced by the act of filming each other.
In a parallel series of images which are interdigital with the first these
video cameras have been replaced with a neuro-opthalmologic instrument
called the prism bar which measures deviations in the alignment of the eye.
This work talks about the history of two parallel systems of visualization.
On one hand the history of apparatti that led to the camera and on the other
those devices used to look into the brain. A much more detailed exposition
of this work will be shown at he California Museum of Photography in March
where actual devices which combine a neurological device attached to a
series of photographic and cinematic cameras will be displayed in vitrines.
Part two looks at the observer himself/herself as he/she engages with the
mutated space of postmodernism.
In "Beyond the Vanishing Point Los Angeles" and "Remapping" persons and
events reflected in a mirror glass facade become part of film-like sceneries
in which reality, imagination and virtuality fuse.
In the performance video "Being Prada Seen" Neidich is filmed rollerblading
in New York Citiy dressed in a Prada sportswear outfit. The video explores
how fashion, especially by Prada, works as a kind of space where political,
social and economic elements interact very easily. The raw material of the
video has been digitalized at a very high speed exposing the apparatus of
digital technology resulting in an extremely rough picture.
Architecture, landscape, fashion and the body become folded into one another
and the human form becomes a kind of android in a video game.
Exposition: february 2nd to march 2nd 2002
Opening: february 1st, 7 pm
mullerdechiara
Weydinger Strasse 10
D-10178 Berlin
Tel: +49-30-39032040
Fax: +49-30-39032044