RISE OF GIANTS - Banz and Bowinkel - PRISKA PASQUER VIRTUAL GALLERY

RISE OF GIANTS

Artists: Banz & Bowinkel

Curator: Tina Sauerlaender (peer to space)

Opening: Thursday, November 25, 2021, 6 - 8 pm CET

Here at PRISKA PASQUER VIRTUAL GALLERY

Accompanying Program:
InstaLive Artist Talk: Dec 2, 2021, 6 pm CET
Virtual Happy Hour Drop Party, Jan 20, 2022, 6-8 pm CET
Soft Opening in Cologne at PRISKA PASQUER Gallery, Saturday, January 29, 12 - 6 pm

The invisible bots and algorithms which govern our online behavior and collect our data every day, adopt visual forms in the series Bots by the artist duo Banz & Bowinkel. They occupy the virtual world of the PRISKA PASQUER gallery as giant cyborgs. The island, transformed into an all-encompassing coordinate system, becomes a symbol for the Internet. As visitors, we find ourselves in the middle of an experimental field of algorithms.

The Internet is a training ground for artificial intelligence to study, evaluate, and learn to anticipate human behavior. In doing so, they make our lives easier as we use map apps, talk to Alexa, or when Siri sets our alarm clock. Their knowledge helps drive our connection to technology and keeps it running as frictionless as possible. In the 1990s, we deliberately dialed into the Internet using routers and now we are connected to the internet automatically. We still push buttons and give voice commands today, but tomorrow we will control our actions with eye movements, hand movements, or even brain waves. The blurring of the boundary between humans and technology results in our gradual transformation into a technological giant. The visitors as cyborgs in the PRISKA PASQUER virtual gallery also attain formidable sizes. The gallery lies at their feet like Lilliput, the fictional island in Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels.

Banz and Bowinkel's series Primitives also addresses the issue of scale in virtual reality. Primitives are simple basic graphical forms that are used as a foundation for the creation of more complex structures. Triangles, polygons or point clouds are important primitive forms for digital 3D objects. These shapes have no size and are arbitrarily scalable without loss of quality, since their existence is defined by the relationship of the individual parts to each other. Size is relative here as well, just like in the PRISKA PASQUER virtual gallery. Banz and Bowinkel's Primitives play with the various proportions of size that exist in the gallery space. 

With a virtual reality headset, we have the opportunity to experience what is denied to us on the computer screen. We dive into the dimensions of virtual space and experience a new perspective. With ease, we fly over the miniature version of the virtual gallery and explore the gigantic bots and primitives. The exact size of our own avatars is unclear. However, thanks to an increasingly frictionless connection with technology, we too grow into cyborg giants with extraordinary powers.

PORTRAIT OF A FUTURE

Peer to space’s curator Peggy Schoenegge curates the solo show PORTRAIT OF A FUTURE. of the artist Charlie Stein. The exhibition takes place at PRISKA PASQUER’s virtual gallery space as a part of the ONE TO ONE exhibition series from March 10 to April 6, 2021, followed by a solo exhibition at the gallery’s premises in Cologne, Germany later this year.

The exhibition title PORTRAIT OF A FUTURE is derived from Charlie Stein’s series Portrait Of A Future Self (2019-2021). The female robots free themselves from the constraints of their intended purposes and turn both gender clichés and the relationships between humans and machines on their heads. In light of the increasing significance of robot technologies in our daily lives, questions emerge about their social functions. Robots are produced by humans and therefore shaped by our norms and values. Charlie Stein's works open up the opportunity for reflection. In the future, will we continue to reproduce stereotypical role models in the machines we are creating? Or do we have a desire to change and develop a more open, diverse and fair existence to shape our future?

>>> Enter the exhibition here <<<

Charlie Stein, Autumn Magnet, Painting, 2020

Charlie Stein, Autumn Magnet, Painting, 2020