Good dog, socialite and art-lover Henri sits beside a video installation by artist Daniel Keller, captured 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.
On Friday I dropped by one of my favourite galleries to check out “thank you”, a “winter hang” featuring a piece each from the gallery’s stable of artists. I’m privileged to call a couple of these talents friends so it’s always a pleasure to see what’s up (literally) at the space. Shout out to paint-boss Avery Singer, busy slaying Kunsthalle Zurich this weekend.
Work by Avery K. Singer and K-HOLE at Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler taken with the Samsung Galaxy Alpha.
#tbt to 2013 with Daniel Keller’s first version of Soft Staycation (gaze track edit), screenshot taken with the Samsung Galaxy Alpha.
Of all the work on display at Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, the piece I know best is “Soft Staycation (gaze track edit)” by artist (and boyfriend) Daniel Keller. Here’s a #tbt to 2013 and the first iteration of the piece installed with my help (in between selfies of course) at the Kunstwerke Institute for Contemporary Art. The work consists of a huge LED video curtain slumped over a corner of the room as “gaze-tracking” data twinkles across its surface. An eye-tracking camera is used beforehand to measure the eye movements of a group of participants paid by the artist (playing the role of “job creator”) to watch a half-hour compilation of national tourism board adverts.
Fighting Gravity, London-Moscow, Moscow-London by Claire Fontaine, taken with the Samsung Galaxy Alpha.
The following evening I returned to Galerie Neu with artist Britta Thie for more spectacle, this time from Claire Fontaine (with Andreas Slominski and Philippe Thomas). Titular video work “Fighting Gravity” depicts an uneventful journey between London and Moscow, filmed from the cockpit of a private jet and projected in real-time on a double-sided screen. The piece feels pleasantly soporific and weightless but the press release (unfortunately not online yet) was enlightening: “…far from the ground, prisoner of a fictitious heaven fuelled by oil, pollution and the violence of abusive privilege…gravity is of course a word with moral resonance, also a synonym of weight and it appears that somehow during the last crisis people and their money evaporated, they were no longer important, no longer present, relegated to a limbo of inexistency where these images float portraying a journey that isn’t submitted to border formalities and the constraints of mobility of ordinary people”.
Work by Hanne Lippard installed at Kinderhook and Caracas, taken with the Samsung Galaxy Alpha.
Outside we bumped into artist Simon Denny (wearing some excellent Reebok Pump Furys) talking with David Toro and Solomon Chase from Dis Magazine (in town to begin work on the next Berlin Biennale) before heading to Kinderhook and Caracas to catch Hanne Lippard’s first solo show at the space, “SUPPORT”. I arrived dismayed at having missed her performance but happy to catch the final drift to the bar around the corner with the promise of a talking parrot known to chant, “It’s ok, it’s ok”. After the solemn weather we’ve been having, this was just what I wanted to hear.
Artists Hanne Lippard, Ellie de Verdier and Sol Calero seen among friends at Kinderhook and Caracas, captured with the Samsung Galaxy Alpha.
Text by Ella Plevin
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