During the coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.
Sunset, 2019, light painting
Barak Chamo’s work explores the limits of perception, what is seen and unseen by the human system, and how its vulnerabilities are laid bare by interaction with technology in an accelerating feedback loop. His research-based practice employs light, video and kinetic sculptures to create intimate subjective spaces that recognize these limits inspire a shift in perspective.
The group show “Formula 1: A Loud, Low Hum” at CUE Art Foundation raises questions on the meaning of visual formulae in contemporary art without falling into the trap of formulaic. The genesis of this three-person sculpture group show started with an open call in which the curators Mira Dayal and Simon Wu asked savvy art viewers to suggest “formulas,” that is, combinations of materials and tropes used, or perhaps overused in art today. Out of the 67 formulas submitted, the curators selected the ones they both found intriguing and invited Nikita Gale, Amanda Turner Pohan, and Laurie Kang to come up with responses to formulas that invoked the hard and soft, technological and biological, individual and institutional. Gale’s body-like textures, Pohan’s sleek kinetic sculptures, and Kang’s architectural steel structure, all merge industrial off the shelf materials with invisible elements such as sound, vibration, and sensitivity to light. Like the relationship of body and mind, their fragmented materials assume meaning through the hidden forces that seem to operate them.
