The sea is not an abyss. It teems with an almost unimaginable array of life. Every night, the largest biological migration on Earth takes place, as trillions of creatures travel closer to the surface to feed. Some of these animals, like shrimp, are well-known. Others, like siphonophores—relatives of jellyfish—are unfamiliar: varying wildly in size, from the slightness of a fingernail to the length of a whale, they look like nothing that we find on land.

How does it feel to be one of these creatures? To explore this question, SUPERFLEX designed a computer-generated siphonophore and created an animated film, Vertical Migration, depicting its ascent. At first, the film mechanically circles the creature, getting closer and closer while giving the audience a view of it from all angles. But eventually the perspective shifts, the camera’s movements become more fluid, and the viewer sees the world from the perspective of the siphonophore. 

Unsettling our perceptions of scale and otherness, Vertical Migration is an intimate encounter with a life form that bears no resemblance to human beings, though we share a planet, an ecosystem, and a future. Because of sea-level rise, humans will also be migrating vertically in the coming centuries, to higher elevations and raised buildings. The siphonophore’s story is our story. Though we can never experience its journey through the pitch-black ocean depths, we can shift our perspective to recognize that we’re connected, that our actions affect each other, and that we share a common fate.  

Vertical Migration is commissioned by ART 2030 and TBA21–Academy, and supported by Avatar Alliance Foundation, Dalio Philanthropies, OceanX, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI), New Carlsberg Foundation, The Obel Family Foundation, Beckett Fonden, and Danish Arts Foundation.

Runo Lagomarsino A Conquest Means Not Only Taking Over (2010), is a part of the exhibition Plural Domains: Selected Works from the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation Collection at Harn Museum of Art. 

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Dario Escobar, ‘Obverse and Reverse XXXI’ (2017) is part of the current exhibition BALLS at OOF Gallery.

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Photos by Tom Carter.
Copyright and Courtesy OOF Gallery

Olaf Breuning presents ‘Plans for the Planet’ at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia.

“Artist Olaf Breuning presents Plans for the Planet, an adventure playground for kids to explore, be creative and share their points of view. Throughout the exhibition, children can view animated drawings by the artist, help save a forest, make a portrait and type up plans for the planet for everyone to see.” - National Gallery of Victoria



Plans for the Planet is generously supported by The Truby and Florence Williams Charitable Trust managed by Equity Trustees, the Packer Family and Crown Resorts Foundations, the Neilson Foundation and Spencer Ko and can be experienced until 03.10.2021
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"After a couple of years preparing "Plans For The Planet" at NGV in Melbourne finally opened its doors. We planned to open one year ago, but Corona made it impossible, which was maybe a good thing for the show since the very ambitious team lead by Kate Ryan had more time to work on all the details. The show is based on my work and designed by the fantastic NGV team and me. It is a show for kids to make them think playfully about our current relationship with nature and our plans for the future. Most of the show is interactive; kids can draw on pads, activate small animations by tapping on cutout flowers attached to the wall, putting their drawings on a large wall screen, and many more fun things. They can even walk on printed wooden planks over an imaginary hot lava stream - Jurassic Park meets "Saving The Planet". The show hopefully makes our future generation in charge more sensitive about our behavior towards nature." - Olaf Breuning 

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Mads Gamdrup, Komplementær, 01.06.-30.06.2021 

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Lea Porsager 'STRIPPED' at Kunsthal Charlottenborg. ⁠
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The exhibition is on view until 08.08.2021 ⁠
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For more information please click here
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In the exhibition, Porsager mixes science and esoteric knowledge, including tantric meditation and quantum physics. In her works, energy, matter and body meet and clash up against each other in unseen ways as she lets new forms emerge in encounters with phenomena that we cannot perceive with our senses alone.

The exhibition opens with three cut-up wind turbine blades lying like fallen giants on the floor of Kunsthal Charlottenborg’s grand space. The emptiness of the hall and the spaces between the individual pieces are permeated by an immense, invisible force. Where the blades have been cut, openings appear: wormholes to another dimension, or female openings in the otherwise phallic shape of the blades? Porsager plays with the wind mill as a historic image of the power of the imagination – and as a present-day symbol of sustainable energy, offering assurances that our lives can continue as before as long as our energy is clean.

The works in the exhibition point beyond themselves as art: they could be machines and strange measuring instruments, or cultic objects used for obscure rituals. When Porsager’s works open themselves up to other, alternative or even alien meanings, our imagination is pushed to enter new dimensions. In that sense, the title of the exhibition – STRIPPED – can be understood as a way of kicking old habits, or of unlearning what one previously knew, thereby becoming open to what lies hidden on the other side of humanity’s understanding of ourselves as the centre of the world.

Lea Porsager (b. 1981) is a graduate from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and from the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main in 2010. She has had solo shows at venues such as the Henie Onstad Art Center in Oslo, Kunstverein Göttingen, The Emily Harvey Foundation in New York and The Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde. Porsager took part in documenta 13 and the 14^th Istanbul Biennale. She is currently working on public art commissions in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Her land art piece Gravitational Ripples was inaugurated in June 2018 at Djurgården in Stockholm, commemorating the Swedish victims of the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia in 2004. Porsager holds a PhD from the Malmö Art Academy. She lives and works in Copenhagen.

STRIPPED is curated by Lars Bang Larsen and organised in collaboration with the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. The exhibition is supported by the Augustinus Foundation, the Beckett Foundation, the Knud Højgaard Foundation, the Obel Family Foundation, the Danish Arts Foundation and the William Demant Foundation.

The exhibition is accompanied by a new publication edited by Milena Høgsberg as well as by a series of events, including a talk by American feminist and physicist Karen Barad, who is a great source of inspiration for Porsager’s practice.

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Text by: Kunsthal Charlottenborg ⁠
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We are very pleased to announce that Darío Escobar⁠⁠ 'Construcción Geométrica Nº 03' (2012) is now part of the permanent collection at The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.⁠⁠
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Darío Escobar’s Construccion Geometrica can be seen as a mediated abstraction, where the main idea is to investigate the concept of an abstract standard and geometric consciousness. The work, a wooden panel for a truck in Guatemala, becomes a mediated abstracted object with traces to it's originality.⁠⁠
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"The works consist of wooden truck bodies composed of panels, which form a structure attached to the wall. Hinges make some of them movable, while others are fixed in place. The geometric designs are made with an oil-based paint, inspired by fields of pure colors, from adjacent to complementary. These kind of bodies are commonly found in trucks that carry fruit, vegetables, textiles and other types of cargo from the Guatemalan provinces to the capital city, which is home to the businesses that support the economy of most Guatemalans.

The works use the same techniques, be it a chromatic pallet or the formal and structural aspects that carpentry workshops use. These workshops build and decorate panels for commercial trucks. The main idea of the project is to investigate the concept of an abstract standard and geometric consciousness in a country like Guatemala, which is still waiting for progress and modernity.

It is interesting to see how in a large part of Latin American territory geometric art is carried out very effectively. It is important to consider the fusion of two forms of thought in pre-Hispanic history, as well as the idea of interpreting reality from a more pure aspect such as color. These truck bodies become true geometric reliefs on which chromatic, formal and structural aspects combine to make us think about whether modernism is yet to come, or if it may have already arrived without us realizing it."

- Darío Escobar⁠⁠
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In the occasion of Carlos Amorales current exhibition 'THE AMORALES BROTHERS' in the online exhibition space MELLEMRUMMET, a presentation of new collages and paintings can be experienced in the gallery showroom. ⁠⁠
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We look forward to welcome you.⁠⁠

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In recent years, Carlos Amorales has investigated the possibilities of color. His latest series, Jungla de estrellas (Star Jungle), uses fragmented abstraction as a visual language. Each canvas begins with collage, a part of the artists’ practice for years, which is itself a repetitive act with cycles of cutting, placing, and pasting. The compositions are highly intuitively guided by aesthetics to formulate indecipherable typography defined by fragmentation. 

Bubble Mask is another variation, yet they operate in a different color plane of gradients. Placed in the foreground of the painting, a mask seems to be the most acute part. Yet, a mask conceals something from view to cover up a similar linguistic pattern in the background. The mask also appears in the artist's latest video work as a connector image between two worlds, the digital and physical, articulating current shifts in representation.

In both painting series, Amorales draws from past series like El esplendor geométrico (2015) and La Orgía de Narciso (2020), continuing the explorations of color, space and repetition.

Working on these painting series during the height of the pandemic provided an outlet giving consistency and certainty in the most uncertain time. The practice provided a concentrated emotional and energetic outlet, a routine to get lost and find relaxation by literally bringing order to chaos. The centrality of color allowed Amorales to react to the different stimuli of the various hues while detaching from anxiety-ridden reality.