SUMMER MARATHON PART II

Round 1: (8 July – 26 July) Kristina Chan & Itamar Freed: Lucid Dreams

Round 2: (29 July – 15 Aug.) Miles Debas: Thousand Mile Smile 

Round 3: (19 Aug. – 5 Sept.) Valentin Van der Meulen: Strip Cities 

DAVID NORO: TO DISAPPEAR INTO THE REEDS LIKE A BURROWING TOAD

David Noro’s paintings are sourced from a personal archive of random words, texts, songs, and conversations. Through his process, Noro relays fragments from everyday life into a type of cryptic poetry, wherein words and phrases become enshrined in his artistic practice. In this regard, Noro moves effortlessly through subject matter and themes: including humour and gravitas, fact and fiction, the myth, and the non-sequitur are deftly interwoven with a prosaic and liberated approach. At times, the works recall Rose Wylie, Peter Linde-Busk, or Tal R, but maintain a sensibility that is altogether unique to the young artists. Works are created within a momentary, irreverent, and jocular mind-set, where motifs arise and are constantly re-evaluated through his process. At times, his depictions seem chaotic, but this belies a certain transcendent or almost supernatural feel that the works seem to embody. Noro lives and works in Amsterdam & Copenhagen. He studied at The Gerrit Rietveld Academie and The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp.

SHINUK SUH: POST-HUMAN SYNDROME

Through kinetic sculpture, video, and a healthy dose of wry humour, Shinuk Suh explores how pervading societal ideologies are silently instilled in him by the so-called ‘Ideological State Apparatus’. The artist is keen to analyze how society treats its inhabitants like a product; Suh views our present-day and age as one giant system or factory, wherein persons are akin to products on the production line of a factory. Metal and silicone, (the main materials of the work,) are depicted as the ‘giant system’ and humans, respectively. Processing, slapping, twitching, and revving, the works seem to mechanize the rote manipulations of human (in)activity. Suh is eager to point out the contradictions and dilemmas of society, given the sheer overload of information and representation. The work is stylish, yet perverse; Baudrillardian, but kitsch; socially relevant, but altogether a bit intentionally silly. Suh holds an MFA in Sculpture from London’s Slade School of Art, and has recently shown at the Korean Cultural Centre.

EHRYN TORRELL: FASCINATION WITH THE SEAM

Ehryn Torrell’s textile-works include a range of media, each of which is based on imagery sourced from Vogue. Torrell’s use of fashion magazines as her source ‘montage material’ allows her to deconstruct images that primarily use the body to seduce and sell. Through this process, she destabilizes normative images of gender, race, sexuality, and class, commenting on consumerist culture and also drawing attention to their construction and materiality. The Canadian artist merges digital reproduction, textile, and embroidery to create works that each appears as a haptic visual cacophony, a sort of celebration that purposely subverts and belies their source material and meaning. Through the use of the hand-made, machine, and digital processes, Torrell’s work aims to slow the reading of images and call attention to the lesser-regarded aspects of their fabrication: how labour and material connect the viewer and artist in dialogue like a subliminal text that is overlooked when in their original state. The works include techniques like scanning, printing, textile printing, embroidery, and quilting. Torrell holds an MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design (Halifax, Canada), and is widely collected in public and private institutions.