Indepth Arts News:
"Sabrina Raaf: Flotte/Float"
2005-11-05 until 2005-12-10
OBORO
Montreal, QC,
CA
Sabrina Raaf’s exhibition Float playfully queries the relationship between humans and imaginative technological systems. Ingeniously dissecting organic/scienti•c advancements and their impact on the modes and environments we inhabit, the works in Float suggest a coactive relationship between machines and their users; subjects and their environments; systems and architecture; perception and space.
Float features a panoply of “creative machines” from Lost— a stranded meta-Lander submerged in a miniaturized and kinetic crater space; and Searchstoretrash—a labyrinthine sculpture parodying the “information superhighway”; to Grower—the “rover” that charts ambient CO2 levels to create a “meadow” in green indelible ink. Icelandic Rift, premiering at OBORO, explores notions of scale, geography, location and organic architecture while the photographic series of digital prints Test People presents domestic situations turned askew with unexpected occurrences of antigravity, invasion, war scenarios or passive subservience.
These works—interplaying between art and information—propose and question extended/enhanced somatic presence, agency and affect in the technological realm. Float quixotically leaves the viewer to imagine, wish for and soon marvel at future hybridized natural/technological forms of living.
A text by Valérie Lamontagne accompanies the exhibition.
Sabrina Raaf is a Chicago-based artist working in experimental sculptural media and photography. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at Espace Landowski (Paris), Ars Electronica (Linz), Opel Villas Foundation Art Center (Rüsselsheim), Artbots 2005 (Dublin), Stefan Stux Gallery (NYC), San Jose Museum of Art, Museum Tinguely (Basel), Kunsthaus Graz, ISEA (Helsinki), Klein Art Works (Chicago), Wynick/Tuck Gallery (Toronto) and Painted Bride Center (Philadelphia). She received an MFA in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently Assistant Professor in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Valérie Lamontagne is a Montreal-based performance/digital media artist, freelance art critic and independent curator. She regularly writes about new media and performance art in print and online publications and her curatorial projects have been presented at the New Museum of Contemporary Art (NYC), Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Québec City), OBORO (Montreal), Images Festival (Toronto) and CYNETart (Dresden). Her media-based artwork/performances have been showcased across Canada, the United States and Europe. She received an MFA from Concordia University (Montreal) where she presently teaches in the Computation Arts program and she is a co-founder, with Brad Todd, of the media arts collective MobileGaze.
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