Curatorial text for our second irl exhibition written by argentinian curator Lucia Nielsen
Simulación de lo esencial by Crypt0Baby
In the old days, the bourgeoisie, after long sea voyages, organized gatherings and invited their friends to review, chat and rave about the treasures they had found. Stones, fossils, stuffed animals, dried insects, shells, horns, teeth, antiques, medals, works of art, rock crystal, ivory, amber, etc. These rooms were called rooms of wonders or cabinets of curiosities. This event, has what we could say the same spirit, without any curatorial pretensions, but rather of enjoyment and exhibition. Have a drink with us and let’s go between screens.
The exhibition’s particularity is the bridge between the physical world and the cyber world, as well as the intergenerational crossover between artists. Among the young artists are Frenetik Void, Joaqui Salgado, Kitasavi, Encodesgem, Diego Stigliano and others. Long-time participants include Antonio Berni, Eduardo Pla, Arden Quin.
The Aura project arises a little over a year ago after we met people who were linking with the new blockchain technologies and immersing themselves in crypto art, they were far away from the physical art circuit. Of course this has countless advantages, anyone who has been through the traditional art market will have noticed, on the blockchain there is no shipping, no courier fees, transactions are faster and artists receive royalties for a resale (there is no secondary market as such!). On the other hand, we are at the dawn of crypto art, we are still in the boom but entering a structuring stage, we understand that we have to integrate, that the physical world can learn from the blockchain and vice versa.
Digital art, worth the redundancy, is that which uses digital in its production and exhibition and may not be tokenized. The works participating in this exhibition could be divided into three groups, those that are purely digital, which for their production use programs such as Cinema 4D, Blender, Unreal Engine, among others, these are those that correspond to Milton Sanz, Frenetick Void, Joaqui Salgado, Kitasavi, Manards, Afrodita and Eduardo Pla. Those that carry a mixture between digital and “old school” techniques such as oil, tempera, etc., are the case of Lucas Aguirre, Encodesgem and Aun Helden. And a third group made up of adaptations, which is the case of the works of Arden Quin, Gurvich and Antonio Berni. The latter are digitized and touched through photogrammetry or animated, linking them to the poetics of the gif, an instrument of internet archeology.
6 hours and 54 minutes is the global average time per day that we spend in front of the screen. And to many of us it seems little when we read this figure. So what we are interested in here, is to expand the game, to enable other types of experiences and habits for those who connect to answer an email, enter instagram, facebook, etc. We invite them to surf the web, just as travelers used to surf the deep waters and bring those rare, new and unique things to their homes. Today it is no longer necessary to have a room or embark on a long journey, a device is enough.
Walter Benjamin identifies aura with singularity, with the experience of the unrepeatable. Today we have reached the twilight of the same. Aura, perhaps unintentionally, winking at one of the most quoted texts in the history of art, sells cryptographic tokens that represent something unique with the possibility of infinite reproduction. The change of experience always brings with it a change of perception.
Lucia Nielsen
