EDGAR MARTINS

The new exhibition Siloquies and soliloquies on death, life and other interludes, confronts the viewer with a variety of questions concerning death and the intermittencies of life, with the interludes and intervals that, between each image, reveal indicia and objects that – under the specter of death – ramify in a vast archive of conceptual, visual and documental relations. This three-year long investigation was developed by the artist in the National Institute of Forensic Medicine and Science, in Lisbon and Coimbra; and includes some images from his personal archive.

In this project, the different strategies Edgar Martins uses to address death include a process of approximation between images in which the reality of the dead body (the corpse?) finds correspondences with, for example, the chemical effects of toxic fruits used in India to commit suicide – the chromatic intensity of a scarlet tree confronts us with the ambiguity inherent to its aesthetic radiance and poisonous nature. On the other hand, written language is present as a final moment that is materialized in the suicide’s last letters, something between presence and absence that alludes to that intermittence of çife. In one of the photos, we can see the representation – an austere image on a black background – of a paper plane photographed in a vertical position, reproducing the shape of a supposed last letter of a convict as it was launched from the window of his prison cell. One other image refers to this first moment; a memory of the volitional testimony of the suicidal despair we can read in a text message on the screen of an old Nokia cellphone: “Charles, please take my friends out for lunch. Prey for me. Goodbye”. Just like the seemingly abstract photograms, photos reproducing the limits of the paper and where the written message, as a specter or as a lifeless body, is limited to the weather information concerning the day a certain individual committed suicide.

Opposite – Photogram (7), 2016

Exhibition runs through to October 29th, 2016

Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art
Rua de Santo António à Estrela, 33
1350 – 291
Lisbon
Portugal

www.cristinaguerra.com

HO SINTUNG – DUSTY LANDSCAPE

In less than a decade Ho Sintung has emerged as one of the most distinctive artists of her generation. Preferring to work on a small scale and favoring pencil and graphite on paper above other media, she gives visual expression to her passion for all aspects of the cinema, not only films themselves but the buildings in which they are shown, posters and other ephemera. Although she has said that her favorite pastimes are “reading books and watching films,” her work also reveals her familiarity with a wide range of twentieth century visual art to which she refers in her tongue-in-cheek hommages to the “movies.”

For Dusty Landscape Ho Sintung turns her attention to horror movies. In a recent interview, she remarked how her father used to love watching violent and scary movies although she did not share his taste at the time. She recognizes, however, that “the horror film has a significance in the history of film that should not be neglected – it tirelessly brings up the past, retelling stories that have been rejected over and over again. It makes sure that prayers that were unheard will be heard; justice that was absent will resurface once more. Horror films respond to reality in the same way that our bodies react to horror films. These drawings, although milder and more tactful in tone, disrupt the familiarity of the densely-knit fabric of day-to-day life, exposing its inner abnormality.”

Opposite – When the Triangle Descends the Stairs, 2016

Exhibition runs through to November 20th, 2016

Chambers Fine Art
Red No.1-D, Caochangdi
Chaoyang District
100015
Beijing
China

www.chambersfineart.com

JOSH BITELLI – STOPTOBER

To understand what advertising means is dependent on finding out how they mean, and analysing the way in which they work. In the case of advertising materials distributed by the state, this how, or their form, is the way in which that policy is delivered to the electorate – it’s about mediation and contact. Content is often interchangeable and cannot be separated from its form. The deceptive mythology of advertising requires us to believe that an advert is simply a vehicle for a message even when this message is clearly untrue.

The 600 images covering the floor of Union Centre are taken from records of the Department of Health’s most pressing concerns. They are reproduced here from an extensive archive of pamphlets, posters, stickers, envelopes, beer mats, post-cards and stamps, all of which have been photographed through their archival-grade, plastic sleeves. Omitted from this collection are the materials that do not fit so easily within the medical archive and museum: the televised ads, large format prints, instagram images or posts by Public Health England’s ‘obesity’ twitter. ‘Their very existence in more than one medium gives them a sort of independent reality [linking] them to our own lives’.

The scale of the influence of these campaigns, and how this then effects doctor-patient relationships, is yet to be adequately examined. Advertisements work to ‘translate statements from the world of things’2: flies equate to rotting flesh, degradation, horror and abjection, they are decomposers and feed on faeces or the dead. They are usually repelled by smoke but here, through photomontage techniques, the smoke leaving the cigarette is like a soul leaving the body. Our senses are disrupted by this rearrangement of images and possibility is mistaken for actuality.

Exhibition runs through to October 22nd, 2016

UNION
94 Teesdale Street
London
E2 6PU

www.union-gallery.com

SAM EKWURTZEL – LATE MORNING EARLY SPRING

Sam Ekwurtzel’s exhibition refers to an 8 minute period occurring on the morning of March 30, 2016. 10:35 am – 10:42 am to be exact. This is the period for which Ekwurtzel was able to acquire a small group of building materials manufactured by United States Gypsum Corporation and National Gypsum Company, Charlotte Pipe Foundry and Tyler Pipe Foundry. The materials were not generated specifically for the exhibition; rather they were synchronously pulled from the four independent production lines or purchased from distributors. There is a melancholic sentiment looming over the show as it explores three aspects of time: systematized time demarcated by the logic of industrial production; the incomprehensibility of geologic deep time; and the feeling of biological time, the changes that occur to one’s body as it ages.

These materials can be found in every building in New York City, hidden and enmeshed beneath and within a building’s surfaces and utilities. Cast iron drainage pipe is used to quietly convey wastewater from innumerable tributaries toward sewer mains. Cement board is used as a planar substrate for tile in moisture prone areas such as washrooms and showers. Although different companies produce cement board and cast iron pipe, the final products are essentially the same because they must satisfy common building code regulations and third party testing requirements. To facilitate quality control, each company time stamps each manufactured piece with its specific moment of creation. Ekwurtzel has synchronized, in the pieces on view, cement board and pipes made at the same time but by competing manufacturers; twins that meet for the first time and become inextricably linked once reclassified as art. The rarity of this meeting cannot be overstated, as well as the humor and absurdity of the gesture. But the experience of looking at things that are technically identical (but commercially distinct) reveals a wide variety of differences: individualism lurking in the bowels of automated, industrialized production.

Exhibition runs through to October 16th, 2016

Simone Subal Gallery
131 Bowery, 2nd floor
New York, NY
NY 10002
New York

www.simonesubal.com