Solo show: Order and Progress at Fabio Paris Art Gallery (Brescia, 15 January 2011)

I am happy to announce my new solo show at the Fabio Paris Art Gallery in Brescia, Italy, curated by Domenico Quaranta. It is a small but very nice gallery that also hosts artists like UBERMORGEN.COM, Eva e Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG and my friends Nullsleep and Tonylight - so I am in realy good company.

This is the invitational text Domenico wrote for the opening of the exhibition (the longer catalogue text will follow soon):

Fabio Paris Art Gallery is proud to present Order and Progress, the first Italian solo show by the Dutch artist Rosa Menkman (Arnhem, The Netherlands 1983), curated by Domenico Quaranta. The title of the show, inspired by the Brazilian flag (Menkman developed one of the works on show in Brazil, during a residency at the São Paulo Museum of Image and Sound), is an ironic and cynical reference to the ideology behind all technological developments: an ideology that the artist combats with her obsessive exploration of the aesthetic, poetic and cultural consequences of the error.

Menkman's work focuses on visual artifacts created by accidents in digital media. The visuals she makes are the results of glitches, compressions, feedback and other forms of noise. Although many people perceive these accidents as negative experiences, Rosa emphasizes their positive consequences, and explores their semantic and metaphorical implications at the same time. All this becomes clear watching the works selected for the show, starting from The Vernacular of File Formats (2010). Conceived to illustrate an essay discussing how the incident, if normalized and implemented in software, can easily turn into a banal graphic effect, losing its extraordinary, revelatory potential, this series of prints has its starting point in a black and white video where a heavily made-up Menkman is seen combing her hair (an explicit reference to Marina Abramovic's Art Must Be Beautiful). Manipulated with different kinds of glitches peculiar to different image file formats, the image reveals its dramatic nature, deteriorating under the attack of sudden cuts, grainy effects, erratic blocks of pixels, stripes and lurid colours. The face of the artist is also the subject of the two videos Dear Mr Compression (2009) and The Collapse of PAL (2010).

The latter was developed as an audiovisual performance for television, using PAL, the analogue broadcasting signal behind the history of television in Europe, before it finally became obsolete. In different ways, these works highlight the personal and dramatic side of artworks that, at first glance, can appear to focus solely on linguistic and formal issues.

The last work on show is a software programme written by the artist which produces glitches that can be transcoded from one file format to another, allowing the user to explore the possibilities explored in The Vernacular of File Formats. 

Domenico Quaranta, December 2011.

Videowall Worm schlußparty: 10 Dec

....My favorite podium in the Netherlands, WORM, closed its doors (to open them somewhere else in the future). I was  asked to create the videos that played in a video installation during the closing party. These were the videos, which basically show the the Vernacular of File Formats. I made the videos with my Monglot Software, which is soon to be released. ....

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WORM schlußparty II :: 10 dec 2010 -- Closing party WORM, Rotterdam, NL

....This weekend my favorite podium in the Netherlands, WORM, is going to close its doors (to open them somewhere else in the future). I have been asked to create the videos that will be playing in the video installation during the closing party. Unfortunately I wont be able to attend the party because I am still in Brasil working on a new movie - but the videos will show on an old 3x3 videowall, which will be pretty cool-looking....

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Here are some other new dates that I will attend and do some stuff at:

now->TBA [extended to end of December] - The Tipping Point of Failure, Galeria NT, Łódź, PL.

10/12/2010 - Video installation at WORM schlußparty Rotterdam, NL.

11/12/2010 - Visuals at Improvisado #41, Casa das Caldeiras, Sao Paulo, BR.

15/01/2011 - Order and Progress solo show at Gallery Fabio Paris, Brescia, IT.

27/01/2011 - DOGtime, Rietveld, Amsterdam, NL.

03/02/2011 - Collapse of PAL performance at Transmediale, Berlin, DE. 

10/02/2011 - Artist talk at Data.ie, Dublin, IR.

25/02/2011 - LOW RES RETRO exhibition opening at Planetart, Amsterdam, NL.

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Order and Progress 2010/2011 (São Paulo, Brazil)

In my residency at MIS (The São Paulo Museum of Image and Sound) I am developing an independent audiovisual work based on my Glitch Studies Manifesto. The video is going to be called Order and Progress (as is the motto written on the flag of Brazil).

In the original Glitch Studies Manifesto I argue for research and a broader understanding and acceptance of glitches in 11 pages of text. Because of this big amount of text I am sure I wont be able to avoid text in this video, so over the past weeks I have been experimenting and puzzling on how to tackle the issue of text without it being disturbing...

I made two true type fonts: One called Glitch that is based on gif glitching and one based on compression called Artifact. They are available to download and install - so you can use them in your own computer.

I am not sure about the glitch font, I like the lofi font but I think I wont use it in Order and Progress - at least not in the "normal" state. --- they are still so clean..

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