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EVA
and FRANCO MATTES aka 0100101110101101.ORG
Colorless, Odorless and Tasteless
West
Coast Debut
February 25 to April 2, 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, February 25, 5:30 to 7:30pm
Images
San
Francisco, CA. January 18, 2011. Cain Schulte Contemporary
Art San Francisco is pleased to present the West Coast debut
of the New York-based, internationally known video and performance
artists Eva and Franco Mattes, aka 0100101110101101.ORG, with
their solo exhibition Colorless, Odorless, Tasteless, on view
from February 25 to April 2, 2011.
For
their first solo exhibition in San Francisco, Eva and Franco
Mattes will create an interacting installation/performance
with an arcade video game. The title Colorless, Odorless,
Tasteless refers to the properties of carbon monoxide produced
by their arcade video game, rigged with a real car engine
that turns on when played. The audience will decide the amount
of pollution released in the atmosphere by their playing the
game, and creating unexpected outcomes by their actions. The
main focus of this installation/performance is online performances,
the video game industry, and environmentalism, but his latest
piece, as common in the Matteses work, contains also a great
element of reversal of roles.
The
players will turn into spectacle. The drama will happen on
this side of the monitors...
The show will also include a selection of their latest new
media projects, mostly connected to online performances and
video game works. "No Fun", 2010, an online performance
in which Franco Mattes simulated committing suicide in a public
webcam-based chat room. Thousands of random people watched
while he was hanging from the ceiling, swinging slowly, for
hours. The video documentation of the performance, which was
banned from YouTube, is an unbelievable, at times very disconcerting,
sequence of reactions: some laugh, some are completely unmoved,
some insult the supposed corpse, some take pictures with their
mobiles. Notably, out of several thousand people, only one
called the police.
In "Freedom" we are faced with a live performance
set within the popular first-person shooter videogame "Counter
Strike". Here the artist, Eva Mattes, is refusing to
accomplish the basic role of the game: kill the enemy. She
instead tries to convince the other players to save her because
she is "trying to make an artwork". The result is
the performer being endlessly and brutally killed and abused
by the other players.
Another
very recent installation, "My Generation", 2010,
Video collage with broken computer, is a found footages video
collage of kids freaking out while playing videogames displayed
in a broken computer installation, and portrays involuntary
performances of gamers. This disturbing work examines the
reversal of roles between player and character, reality and
fiction. It exposes the paroxysmal degree of addiction and
mental alienation unchained by technology and social disconnection.
Like many of the Matteses' works, "My Generation"
starkly portrays a Humanity that abandoned reality to live
in front of screens, hoping to be the protagonist of this
spectacle.
Eva and Franco Mattes are the Brooklyn based artist-provocateurs
behind the infamous website 0100101110101101.ORG. Among the
pioneers of the Net Art movement, they have manipulated video
games, Internet technologies, feature films and street advertising
to reveal truths concealed by contemporary society.
The New York-based Matteses have been working for years using
different identities and names in their artworks, impersonating
the Vatican, Nike Corporation or Hollywood movie producers.
They invented the life and work of an artist who was then
invited to participate in the Venice Biennale. They remixed
works of other Internet artists, stole parts of many dozens
of different art masterpieces, from a Kandinsky to a Warhol,
in a performance that lasted two years, and created a fake
Maurizio Cattelan's sculpture.
Their art has been featured at the Venice Biennale (2001),
the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2001), Manifesta, Frankfurt
(2002) and in various venues worldwide, including the New
Museum, New York (2005), Collection Lambert, Avignon (2006)
and Performa, New York (2007 and 2009).
Opening reception: Friday, February 25, from 2011, 5:30 to
7:30 pm. The artists will be present.
High-resolution images available on request.
Contact:
Marina Cain, Director
info@cainschulte.com
+1 415 543 1550
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