A collective and itinerant exhibition investigating the flooding of internet aesthetics in the real world
As time goes by – and as the technological process advances – it becomes clearer and clearer that what we call “real” and “virtual” are actually two sides of the same coin. Just think about our presence on the Internet, especially on social networks; or about the image that we project of ourselves online and that we end up feeling ours. Or again, about avatars, AI assistants, dating apps, blockchain organization, metaverse events. And the list is still long.
Net art is, without any doubt, a digital native art form: it was born and grown on the Internet, having its peak in the ‘90s. Since then, that boundless world inside a computer – the only place that man had not yet discovered (and that can never colonize completely) – has evolved with a surprising speed. And as our relationship with technology evolves, so do the various art forms that drag from digital aesthetic, computer graphics and Internet subcultures. Once safeguarded by the screen, the “gate” has now opened, and the virtual has hopelessly poured into the offline world, creating a “different” dimension, in which both elements (the physical and the immaterial) are now indistinguishable. How to fix the coordinates of this change? How to navigate this threshold?
A collective and itinerant exhibition, Web To Verse is on view at MODAL Gallery in Manchester. Other steps will follow in London, Dubai, Miami and New York, with different artists and even curatorial collaborations. Aiming to help the observer to understand this paradigm shift, the show investigates the flooding of the culture of internet aesthetics in the real world, through works by Miltos Manetas, Oliver Laric, Jonas Lund, Federica Di Pietrantonio, Sofia Crespo, Jon Rafman, Nye Thompson, Osinachi, Joey Holder and Yuqian Sun.
Curated by Valentino Catricalà, Alfredo Cramerotti and Auronda Scalera, in collaboration with Thomas Dukes, the exhibition sheds a light on those artists who, evolving their practice from internet art, are creating artworks that arise from the culture of information and digital, overflowing the boundaries of the screen, without limitation of technique or material. The idea at the core of this project is that becoming increasingly mutual, this bond is marking the transition from a “web” world (in which off-line reality, obviously in three dimensions, is transposed into the two dimensions of the screen) to a “verse” world (an environment in which the boundaries between these divisions become increasingly blurred, contaminating each other until they become inseparable).
LINK
- Beyond the world end. A conversation with NONE Collective - November 24, 2023
- The Internet gets real. “Web To Verse” at MODAL Gallery, Manchester - November 10, 2023
- Theo Triantafyllidis at Spazio Vitale, Verona - October 27, 2023
