“Paging Yolanda” Exhibition
Johannes Vogt Gallery
This event has ended.
Johannes Vogt Gallery is pleased to present “Paging Yolanda”, a group show developed collaboratively between the gallery and the participating artists. Its concept is based on a new analog exhibition format that alludes to the childhood game “Heads Up Seven Up”. The exhibition presents work by seven artists based in New York and Chicago. The selected artists contend with figuration, abstraction, and the human body in space via painting, sculpture, light art, and performance.
This exhibition format takes its inspiration from the playful collapse of real life relation building into the relational visualization of networked social environments occurring in the game “Heads Up Seven Up”. It is intended to serve dually as a recursive and versioned DIY platform for exhibition making as well as an investigation into social networks we inhabit on- and offline.
James O. Clark (b. 1948) is a sculptor working with light. Luis Miguel Bendaña’s (b. 1988) work is situated in personal iconography and painting. Harry Finkelstein’s (b. 1990) often collaborative process involves painting and performance. Donna Huanca (b. 1980) is a performance artist working with paint and clothing. Elizabeth Jaeger (b. 1988) is a sculptor investigating figuration in space. Brian Kokoska (b. 1988) is a painter and sculptor whose work exists between abstraction and figuration. Jasper Spicero (b. 1989) works with a broad range of materials to create his emotional sculptures, drawings and installations.
Heads Up Seven Up Rules:
1. Find a space for an art show
2. Pick one artist
3. The artist picks the following artist
4. Repeat step 3 until seven artists are selected
5. Each artist exhibits work
A hallmark of successful game design is the ability for a simple set of rules to encourage emergent and robust game play. The case of Heads Up Seven Up is interesting due to the fact that the emergent play is primarily social in nature. The gameplay can be interpreted in at least two ways: to create social bonds among the players, and to relationally visualize the social structures already intact. It facilitates interaction through structured contact while acting as an entry point into the micro-community of childhood social politics. In this way the game becomes useful and can be considered an example of gamification of a more fluid system of conditions existing outside of structured play. It has a real-life affect within the community; “I’m here to make friends.”
This affect leads directly to the second interpretation of the game: as a relational visualization of pre-existing social structures. During play players are privy to a more in depth glimpse into the social workings of their classroom. Who picked who is obviously the most pertinent thing to note, but also how hard or softly my ones thumb was touched which signifies the picking, along with other environmental cues; how sneaky or casually you were picked and if the picker had a reputation of being sneaky or casual, or even known tendencies for competition.
In this way, if one were to map out the game, pre-existing social relations would be readily apparent. When the game is played in succession it functions as a sort of feedback loop and the above two propositions are bridged. Successive play as with all games allows the player to become better at playing the game; traversing the learning curve. In most cases this learning curve is tailored towards well-defined goals, but here since the most notable consequences of play are impacts outside the gaming arena successive play draws relations built on previous games back into the following ones.
The Heads Up Seven Up exhibition format was developed by Nate Hitchcock & Jordan Rhoat. Chicago, Summer, 2010
Media
Schedule
from June 18, 2014 to July 17, 2014
Opening Reception on 2014-06-18 from 18:00 to 20:00