#SleekAlphaSelfie at Galerie Barbara Weiss taken with the Samsung Galaxy Alpha.
In our “Me, Myself and Art” series, in collaboration with Samsung Galaxy Alpha, Sleek takes an immersive approach to the art world. Via the medium of writer and stylist Ella Plevin, and her shiny new Samsung Galaxy Alpha, we bring the art world to you in a uniquely personalised way, utilising performance, selfies and video to present new perspectives on the art scene. Check out #SleekAlphaSelfie to win a phone for yourself.
This week I swung by Galerie Barbara Weiss to catch the last few days of “No Games Inside the Labyrinth”. I spent a good amount of time beside Antoine Catala’s sculptures “Logo to Self-Consciousness” and “(@ @)”. His works are nail-on-the-head reflections on the way we navigate relationships with technology (or more specifically to “images and the machines that produce them” as he has said in interview). I keep thinking about the value of online content creation and curation. The topic is more than pertinent to a freelancer like me, so often hunched over my laptop scraping what I can from the bowels of the internet…this is the reality of being “immersed” in the art world for so many of its participants.
Antoine Catala’s kinetic sculpture “( @ @ )” taken with the Samsung Galaxy Alpha
I’m usually a huge fan of digital culture. I’ve written about it, I surround myself with people similarly in thrall to a range of devices and I don’t do “sorry, we don’t have wifi”. But this week my own techno-sentiment barometer has recently been set firmly to emo. With reports of Russian troops ploughing into Ukraine or Cameron Frankenstein-ing the NHS buried under iterations of Kim Kardashian’s rear end, Rydergate and debate over Lena Dunham ravishing her sister, I’m kind of wondering if we got the utopia we deserve. I can’t take any more listicles, calculated provocation, cute animal videos or well-meant but mishandled social justice crusades. I feel like logging off for the winter (or maybe just for the weekend) so it’s at once both oddly comforting and disturbing to watch Catala’s bright, neutral emoticons roll lazily towards my feet in a display of acquired agency and physicality.
Works by Antoine Catala and Josh Tonsfeldt installed at Barbara Weiss. Taken with the Samsung Galaxy Alpha.
Lucy Chinen just published a much more objective post about sentiment and online participation, all I could muster was this selfie:
#SleekAlphaSelfie with Antoine Catala’s “Logo to Self-Consciousness”. taken with Samsung Galaxy Alpha.
Text by Ella Plevin
To see more from our Me, Myself and Art series and to enter to win a Samsung Galaxy Alpha of your own, check out our #SleekAlphaSelfie competition
Check out previous entries here on our #SleekAlphaSelfie Tumblr.