"Bright Lights After Armageddon" Exhibition
Pablo's Birthday (25 Cleveland pl.)
This event has ended.
What if we are living in the end times, but as Joseph Campbell wrote, “Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end”? What if rather than an all-consuming fire, Armageddon is a scintillating brightness, illuminating the first stirrings of a much better future? Could the day after Armageddon be the most beautiful day ever?
Perhaps a symptom of postmodern anxiety, the idea of Apocalypse—the final end of days—pervades the culture. In reports on the global economic crisis. In news stories about bath salt-crazed cannibals. In best-selling novels for teenagers and in the trendy academic cynicism of critical theorists. In disaster movies inspired by vague Mayan prophecy and in the dubious claims of religious leaders whose final-day predictions are pushed later and later into the calendar. Our culture sounds the alarm of Apocalypse like the Times Square bell-ringer whose sign reads, “The End is Near.”
Judged solely on the pervasiveness of the rhetoric, it would seem we live in troubling times. While there are always those who fear change, our rapidly-advancing info-technological society inspires many to proclaim we are bringing about our own destruction. But as much as our machines are responsible for intellectual atrophy, ecological devastation, and ubiquitous surveillance, they likewise provide us a glimmer of hope to deliver us from disease, political tyranny and, just maybe, our own mortality. Media doom and gloom frequently overshadows the good news, but from a different perspective, the story is quite different.
Maybe it is all a matter of a change in perception. If the Apocalypse is soon to come, perhaps we should be welcoming Armageddon. As in the Hindu myth, where the destruction of the world at the end of the restless and turbulent satya yuga era ushers in a new world of peace and enlightenment, the day after Armageddon may be much brighter than the day before.
Mark Brown
ARTIST BIO:
-MICHAEL BELL-SMITH-
Takes familiar visual elements – from games, advertising, interiors, and corporate design, among other places – and positions them within unexpected conceptual frameworks. His digital animations and appropriations wryly reflect upon our cultural moment: as he tracks the circulation and proliferation of images and sounds, he charts a rapidly changing history of viral content. He mixes flatness with deep perspectives, and motion and stillness, in dynamic meditations on the image's hold on truth.
lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He holds a BA in Semiotics from Brown University, Providence, RI; and an MFA from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.
Selected exhibitions include: Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; ICA MECA, Portland, Maine (solo); Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv (all 2012); Hiroshima MOCA, Japan (solo); Caixaforum, Spain (both 2011); Max Hans Daniel, Berlin (solo); Ulrich Museum, Wichita, KS;SFMOMA, San Francisco (all 2010); Krannert Art Museum, Urbana-Champaign, IL; Macro Future, Rome (both 2009); The 2008 Liverpool Biennial, UK; The 5th Seoul International Media Biennale; Foxy Production, New York (solo); The New Museum, New York; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC (solo); Krannert Art Museum, Urbana-Champaign, IL (all 2008); Musee d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris; MoMA, New York (screening); Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, TX (all 2007); The Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland (screening)(2006);
and Tate Liverpool, UK (2005).
http://www.michaelbellsmith.com/
-RAFAËL ROZENDAAL-
Born 1980, Dutch-Brazilian, lives and works in New York.
Rafaël Rozendaal is a visual artist who uses the internet as his canvas. His artistic practice consists of websites, installations, drawings, writings and lectures.
Spread out over a vast network of domain names, he attracts a large online audience of over 25 million visits per year.
His work researches the screen as a pictorial space, reverse engineering reality into condensed bits, in a space somewhere between animated cartoons and paintings.
His installations involve moving light and reflections, taking online works and transforming them into spatial experiences.
He also created BYOB (Bring Your Own Beamer), an open source DIY curatorial format that is spreading across the world rapidly.
Selected exhibitions: Venice Biennial, Valencia Biennial, Moca Taipei, Casa Franca Brasil Rio, TSCA Gallery Tokyo (solo), Spencer Brownstone Gallery NYC (solo), NIMk Amsterdam (solo),
Stedelijk Museum project space (solo).
Selected press: Flash Art, Dazed & Confused, Interview Magazine, Wired Magazine, Purple Magazine, McSweeney’s, O Globo, Vice Magazine.
http://www.newrafael.com
-TRAVESS SMALLEY-
Born 1986, Huntington, WV is based in Jersey City, NJ. He holds a BFA from The Cooper Union, New York, and studied painting and digital printmaking
at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA.
Recent exhibitions include Drawing Room, London; Preteen, Mexico City; Foxy Production, New York; House of Electronic Arts, Basel; Saamlung, Hong Kong; CCA Glasgow, UK (all 2012).
www.travesssmalley.com
-ANNE DE VRIES-
The works by Anne de Vries offer access to our increasing entanglement with technology – its material and symbolic origins, its influence on our sense of social reality,
its socio-political implications and its future potentials.
From the mines, energy plants and factories, where the hardware basis of information technologies comes into being, to brand names, advertising images, product displays, personal use and ultimately – piles of toxic waste – commodities undergo a variety of state changes throughout complex ecological cycles. What does it take for a commodity to live,
and what are the ecological principles of art?
http://www.annedevries.info
Media
Schedule
from September 13, 2012 to September 29, 2012
Opening Reception on 2012-09-13 from 19:00 to 21:00