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PRESS RELEASE
EVA
and FRANCO MATTES aka
0100101110101101.ORG
West
Coast
Debut
February 25 to
April 2,
2011
Opening Reception: Friday, February 25,
5:30 to
7:30pm
San Francisco, CA. January
18, 2011. Cain Schulte Contemporary Art San Francisco
is pleased to present the West Coast debut of the New
York-based, internationally known video and performance artists Eva and Franco
Mattes, aka 0100101110101101.ORG, on view from February 25 to April 2,
2011.
For their first solo exhibition in San Francisco, Eva and Franco
Mattes will create an interacting installation/performance with an arcade video
game. The audience, playing the game, would decide the degree
of their intervention to unexpected outcomes. Main focus of
this work is online performances, the video game industry, and environmentalism.
The show will also include a selection of
their latest new media projects, mostly connected to online performances and
video game works.
"No Fun", 2010, an
online performance in which Franco Mattes simulated committing suicide in a
public webcam-based chat room. Thousands of random people
watched while he was hanging from the ceiling, swinging slowly, for hours.
The video documentation of the performance, which was banned
from YouTube, is an unbelievable, at times very disconcerting, sequence of
reactions: some laugh, some are completely unmoved, some insult the supposed
corpse, some take pictures with their mobiles. Notably, out of several thousand
people, only one called the police.
In
"Freedom" we are faced with a live performance set within the popular
first-person shooter videogame "Counter Strike". Here the
artist, Eva Mattes, is refusing to accomplish the basic role of the game: kill
the enemy. She instead tries to convince the other players to
save her because she is "trying to make an artwork". The result is the performer
being endlessly and brutally killed and abused by the other
players.
Another very recent installation, "My Generation", 2010, Video
collage with broken computer, is a found footages video collage of kids freaking
out while playing videogames displayed in a broken computer installation, and
portrays involuntary performances of gamers. This disturbing
work examines the reversal of roles between player and character, reality and
fiction. It exposes the paroxysmal degree of addiction and mental alienation
unchained by technology and social disconnection. Like many
of the Matteses' works, "My Generation" starkly portrays a Humanity that
abandoned reality to live in front of screens, hoping to be the protagonist of
this spectacle.
Eva and Franco Mattes are the Brooklyn based
artist-provocateurs behind the infamous website 0100101110101101.ORG.
Among the pioneers of the Net Art movement, they have
manipulated video games, Internet technologies, feature films and street
advertising to reveal truths concealed by contemporary
society.
The New York-based Matteses have been working for years using
different identities and names in their artworks, impersonating the Vatican,
Nike Corporation or Hollywood movie producers. They invented
the life and work of an artist who was then invited to participate in the Venice
Biennale. They remixed works of other Internet artists, stole parts of many
dozens of different art masterpieces, from a Kandinsky to a Warhol, in a
performance that lasted two years, and created a fake Maurizio Cattelan's
sculpture
Their art has been featured at the Venice Biennale (2001), the
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2001), Manifesta, Frankfurt (2002) and in
various venues worldwide, including the New Museum, New York (2005), Collection
Lambert, Avignon (2006) and Performa, New York (2007 and 2009).
Opening reception: Friday, February 25, from 2011, 5:30 to
7:30 pm. The artists will be present.
High-resolution images available on
request.
Contact:
Marina Cain,
Director
info@cainschulte.com
+1 415 543
1550
Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG: "No Fun", 2010,
Online
performance
251 Post Street, 2nd Floor,
San Francisco, CA 94108 USA
www.CainSchulte.com / info@CainSchulte / +1
415.543.1550
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