TAKE IT TO THE NET

Curated by Hanne Mugaas

Seth Price | Paper Rad | Takeshi Murata | Paul Davis (Beige)

|  Michael Bell-Smith | Thomas Barbey | Jean Baptiste Bayle |

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Take it to the Net is an investigation into a new generation of artists who use the techniques, skills, and aesthetics of the internet as well as digital information transfer in their work. What is or is not conceived of as art is of less importance in an era where the amateur as producer has become the professional. The Internet has opened the floodgates for producers, and the emphasis now lies in the hands of those who access the information.

The exhibition will include works by New York and Paris-based artists such as Michael Bell Smith, whose Chapters 1-12 of R.Kelly’s “Trapped in the Closet” Synced and Played Simultaneously features a manipulated version of R. Kelly’s hip-hopera. Takeshi Murata employs an exacting frame-by-frame technique to turn B-movie footage into fragmented and abstracted digital imagery. Seth Price’s Painting Sites is a slide show ensembling images from an Alta Vista search, complete with a fairytale narrative. The artist group Paper Rad reprograms extracts from television, video games and popular music, frequently doing performances and concerts as well as gallery shows.  They have made a new work for this exhibition.  Jean Baptiste Bayle has constructed a web site for downloading of hits played backwards to defeat copyright laws, as well as a site of compilations of every cover available of Billie Jean by Michael Jackson, and Paul Davis is part of the programming ensemble Beige, and is showing a work comprised of cassette mix tapes along with their packaging design.

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VILMA GOLD PROJECT SPACE

Stefan Rinck

Vilma Gold is pleased to present the first London solo show exhibition by Berlin-based artist Stefan Rinck. The exhibition will take place in a new project space located adjacent to the main space and will comprise new paintings and sculptures.

For the past five years Rinck has documented his peers and contemporaries rendering them in paint and stone-carvings. Rinck’s works form an imaginary world where his friends and colleagues are depicted in invented scenarios, and surrounded by religious iconography.

Rinck’s canvases are boldly painted with strong colourful brushstrokes reminiscent of Fauvism, and the harsh angular figures from the work of the German Expressionists. In their search for an authentic and direct art and their insistence on the fusion of art and life, the Expressionists made frequent depictions of friends, lovers, and patrons from their inner circle. His wall of paintings, however, also acts as a fantastical vanity project; on one canvas Rinck is flanked by two Kirschner-esque women who fawn over him, caressing him and stroking his hair.  He stands, playboy-like, smugly smoking a cigar.

Rinck’s totemic busts, animals and reliefs are carved from sandstone, drawing from the imagery of the primitive, familiar symbols from Egyptian and Christian mythology and fairytale folklore.

For further information or images please contact Martin Rasmussen: +44 (0)20 7729 9888 or: martin@vilmagold.com