Category: theme-03

Bayrle

Posted on by Nathan Jones

Thomas Bayrle

Madonna City Madonna Golden Nugget Club

Series and reproduction in Thomas Bayrle’s work serve as markers of overproduction and the gradual erasure of a qualitative appreciation of our environment. It reflects a contemporary movement mirroring the idea of progress developed in the West since the 18th century. Bayrle traces the age of the machine back to the 13th century, showcasing car engines with a certain admiration, comparing their mechanics to Gothic cathedrals, and evoking the rhythmic humming of scattered monks in medieval Europe.

For Anthropocène Monument, Thomas Bayrle presents a series where religious imagery intertwines with symbols of the mechanization of the world. In the four screen prints submitted by the artist for the project, the drapery of a Gothic Madonna transforms into highways.

BIO

Thomas Bayrle was born in Berlin in 1937 and now lives and works in Frankfurt. He was a permanent lecturer at the Städelschule in Frankfurt from 1975 to 2002. His work has been shown in some of the world’s most important exhibitions, such as documenta 3, 6, and 13 in Kassel, Germany (1964, 1977, 2012), and the 50th and 53rd Venice Biennales (2003, 2009). He has held major solo exhibitions at MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art, Vienna (2017); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2016); Lenbachhaus, Munich (2016), and has received numerous awards and prizes, including the Cologne Art Prize (2000) and the Prix Arts Electronica, Linz (1995).  Bayrle is best known for his ‘super-forms’, large images composed of iterations of smaller cell-like images. Humorous, satirical, and often political, his paintings, sculptures, and digital images are commentaries on the systems of control and domination in a rapidly globalizing economy, via allegorical references to traffic patterns, mass production, and the generic designs of popular goods such as wrappers and wallpaper. 

Relevant Themes: extraction, transport, infrastructure

Category: Events

Mangan

Posted on by Nathan Jones

Nicholas Mangan

Nauru International Airport Tarmac, 2014

The Pacific island of Nauru is a parable for the shortcomings of the Anthropocene. 

Nauru was once the richest nation in the world after Saudi Arabia due to the wealth it amassed through strip mining the nutrient rich soil of its island interior. During an age of decadence and mismanagement in the late twentieth century the riches were squandered. Before long Nauru was bankrupt. What remains today is a baron mostly uninhabitable lunar landscape of coral pinnacles. In a desperate bid to keep the island’s economy afloat the Nauruans resorted to other means of economic survival. They are said to have laundered the last of the Soviet Empire through offshore banking operations. It has been claimed they struck a deal with the US to set up a spy station to monitor defecting North Korean nuclear scientists. And since the early twenty-first century they have received income from the Australian Government to detain refugees and asylum seekers attempting to seek refuge on Australia’s shores.  

The Nauru International airport tarmac is sealed with a glimmering surface of crushed prehistoric coral. It is a monument to the anthropocene. 

It is a portal between two dimensions, delineating the zone between the island and the modern world. The tarmac bares the marks of friction caused by shifting ground. In recent years it was believed that the portal would be blocked forever. 

As the economy dwindled during the age of decadence, the small fleet of aircraft that formed the national carrier was sold, leaving the Nauruan’s stranded, sealed off from the outside world; terminally beached. 

Artist Bio

Nicholas Mangan is an Australian contemporary artist known for his interdisciplinary approach, exploring themes of ecology, economics, and human activity’s impact. His work spans sculpture, installation, video, and drawing, often examining the intersections between natural and human-made systems. Mangan represented Australia at the 2015 Venice Biennale and was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Prize in 2016. His exhibitions, including Art Basel Parcours in 2017 and participation in the Sharjah Biennial in 2019, delve into pressing global issues such as resource exploitation and colonial legacies. In 2020, a major survey of his work titled “Limits to Growth” was presented at the Monash University Museum of Art, showcasing his engagement with environmental change and economic systems.

Themes: ruins, waste, technofossils

human, agency, extinction

extraction, transport, infrastructure

Category: Found Objects

Gusmão & Pedro Paiva

Posted on by Nathan Jones

Falling Tree

João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva

Falling Tree describes a practice of wild and motorized harvesting that the duo wishes to accompany with a divine fictive order:

“Be fruitful and multiply and I will give your leader a chainsaw. Cut down the trees, make piles and planks of wood, and with them you can make two-storey houses that will be eaten by insects. When this happens, another tree will have grown where you desecrated the first one with the machine. You will be able to cut down this other tree and sell the planks because you have to buy food and subsistence. And because all humans are orphans, there is no truth in the world. You have to hunt down these fantasies and transform all raw materials into useful things, because in the end, Paradise is an invention; what exists is nothing but an aggressive flimsy lack of the meaning of existence; and since I have abandoned you, first invent that which allows you to desecrate everything that can be sacred, earth and sky, nail and hammer”.  

Artist Bio

João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva, both born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1979 and 1977 respectively, are Portuguese artists whose collaborative practice spans film, installation, sculpture, and photography. They delve into themes such as perception, time, and existential inquiries. Employing analog film techniques, they create enigmatic narratives blurring reality and fiction. One notable series includes “hypnotic” films, where ordinary scenes become mesmerizing through manipulation of light, sound, and motion. Their art has been showcased internationally in museums, galleries, and biennials, with participation in events such as the Venice Biennale and documenta.

Themes: extraction, transport, infrastructure

Category: Events

Almárcegui

Posted on by Nathan Jones

Rock of Spitsbergen

Lara Almárcegui

Rocks of Spitsbergen is a project produced with the intention of going further down and deepening the reflexion on the territory, the past and the origin of “the built”. A nearly impossible project, Rocks of Spitsbergen is an attempt to identify all the rocks of one Artic Island of 39.000 km2.

The list of rocks in Rocks of Spitsbergen refers to the island’s past, when the region was shaped by the collision of tectonic plates, forming mountains, and sediments were deposited, producing rocks. The work comments on the ways the island territory has changed – and been changed – as a result of geological evolution and mining. The island has a long history of mining with many attempts to extract its abundant ores. There have been drilling expeditions in the search for copper, asbestos, zinc ore, iron, gold, lead and phosphates. With estimated coal deposits of some 22 million tons, the area around Longyearbyen has two active mines, and further extraction will start soon. The main aim of the project is therefore to focus on the future of the island. What will happen to the region if its rocks are extracted for minerals. The work offers a vision of the island’s possible destruction through an exploration of its geological origins and future exploitation.

Themes: extraction, transport, infrastructure

Category: Archives