..white reflects Sunlight.
Fuck you, Albedo!
Earth without white.
Dark. Warm. Hot.
Too hot.
At least for us.
. ŠPELA PETRIČ .
. ADRIENN ÚJHÁZI .
. PAULA FLORES .
. LINDSEY NICHOLSON .
. ELINE KERSTEN .
Albedo – the measure of how reflective a surface is, indicates why polar ice caps are essential for preserving the stability of Earth’s climate. Without their natural white color, there will be more exposure to darker areas, meaning more heat absorption, resulting in even faster melting. This creates the vicious cycle threatening the world as we know it. Worse, as experiments with artificial white proved to have very little impact on global temperatures, this became one of the tipping points that once reached, might cause irreversible changes in the whole system. Our system.
International group exhibition White reflects Sunlight - Fuck you, Albedo! aims to shock and warn about the consequences of our behavior while asking questions and considering options to survive, even adapt at the same time.
Through a variety of mediums, artists explore the current relationship between man and nature. Using digital technologies to give voice to silent phenomena, showcased artworks amplify the impact of the human race on natural ecosystems. Exploring the important information carried in plants and experimenting with symbiotic cultures of bacteria and yeast, artists create possible alternatives to nowadays materials. In case the latest scientific approaches manage to successfully slow down climate change, this might reveal the way out of our unsustainable consumption of Earth’s resources and challenge our valuing system to its core.
EXHIBITION: 18.11 - 23.12
As window exhibition and online (until we can open our door again)
ARTISTS:
Újházi Adrienn (born 1995, Novi Sad), graduated from Bachelor (2018.) and Master (2020.) academic studies at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, Serbia in the Department of Fine Arts, study group – Painting.
Since 2011, she has been actively participating in exhibitions and art colonies locally and abroad. She had a few solo exhibitions in Serbia and participated in international collective exhibitions. She has exhibited more than 60 times overall and participated in over 10 projects.
During her studies, she received several scholarships and awards, among which she highlights: The Annual Award of the Department of Fine Arts for the most successful artists in the disciplines of drawing and painting (2018) - Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, Serbia. Winner of the award "For the highest results achieved at European and world competitions" in the academic year (2017-2018) at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. Noteworthy accomplishments for the school year 2017/2018 she also received a reward from the National Council of the Hungarian national minority of Serbia.
Winner of the first prize of the Organization of the United Kingdom Alumni Association in Montenegro - MAUK, Award Contest "Farewell to the Balkans? Goodbye, BALKAN!".
In 2019, she was invited to Montemero Art Residency by iksvy art as a workshop instructor for organic material (SCOBY) making and alternative art production.
She is also an active member of:
– the gallery "Shock Cooperative" - Novi Sad, Serbia – since 2013;
– "Híd Kör Art" - a cultural magazine for young people in the Hungarian language in Novi Sad – since 2017;
– The Association of Fine Artists of Vojvodina, SULUV - Novi Sad, Serbia – since 2019;
– Co-founder and member of the Center for promotion of transdisciplinarity Co-ART in Novi Sad – since 2020.
Adrienn directs her work towards examining the relationship between man and nature, which includes the fields of ecological art and bio-art in the form of various visual media such as painting, drawing, video, installation.
www.behance.net/Adrienn_Ujhazi
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Through the years in her work, Paula Flores has explored her and our (as a whole) relationship with nature. As someone who was born and raised in an industrial city, the border city of Tijuana her ties with nature were controlled within the city landscape, the other ties were from unknown lands and times that she relived through her grandparents' stories of when they were young and the countless adventures at her grandparents' garden and ranch or other places in the area of Tecate where they would go for walks and hikes that allowed the artist to see other dimensions.
Through her artwork, Paula Flores investigates the hierarchies that humans have created within the natural world, the concepts that we have created to dissect and categorize to our benefit all entities that makeup not just our physical world, but the whole cosmos. Trying to deep dive into developing our abilities of communication and the establishment of meaningful reciprocal relationships with other beings, other entities. Through the practice of painting, sculpture, installation, and performance and using a diversity of material from organic to inorganic and from “living to non-living”. The artist questions the limits that we have imposed on ourselves with the concepts that we have created and look for flexible ways to create new understandings and new ways of existing.
Using rocks, branches, plants, bacteria, fungi as guides, storytellers of the history of the world and the symbiotic relationships that had to be established and kept in balance for the existence of what we know as nature Paula explores our understandings of who we are as humans out and inside of the natural world by applying the role of the mediator and inverting it in all ways possible to her. Pushing herself to leave the concepts and comfort of what it is to be either, or.
paulaflores.info
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Lindsey Nicholson is studying for an MA in Art and Science at the University of Applied Art in Vienna and is an Assistant Professor of Glaciology at the University of Innsbruck. Her artistic work is motivated by exploring uncomfortable dualities in experiences and choices related to societal developments around nature and technology. Her scientific research is focused on unraveling the connections between climate conditions and glaciers, and her scientific teaching on training students to be curious, confident, climate literate members of society.
lindseynicholson.org
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Eline Kersten (1994, The Netherlands) graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts in Maastricht, after which she completed an MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths University in London.
Currently, she is working as an independent curator and artist. In her practice, she researches the relation of humans to their natural environment. She is interested in the meaning we give to landscapes through the stories we tell about them, and the way these are personally, politically, historically or ecologically colored.
She has exhibited internationally, including at the BienalSur (Buenos Aires); Dak’Art (Dakar); DeBrakke Grond (Amsterdam); Hohensalzburg (Salzburg). She has also curated exhibitions and events internationally, at Cubitt Gallery (London); Gorwiden (Zürich); Greylight Projects (Brussels); Schunck* (Heerlen), among others. In early 2020 she set up the artistic-curatorial project ‘Love Letter to an Artwork’ together with Joris Burla. She furthermore co-founded the collective Nowhere, which offers a platform to recently graduated artists, curators and writers through the publication of online zines.
www.elinekersten.nl www.loveletterto.art
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Špela Petrič is a Ljubljana and Amsterdam based new media artist who has been trained in the natural sciences and holds a PhD in biology. Her artistic practice combines the natural sciences, wet biomedia practices, performance, and critically examines the limits of anthropocentrism via multi-species endeavours. She envisions artistic experiments that enact strange relations to reveal the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of our (bio)technological societies. Her work revolves around the reconstruction and re-appropriation of scientific methodology in the context of cultural phenomena, while working towards an egalitarian and critical discourse between the professional and public spheres. Petrič received several awards, such as the White Aphroid for outstanding artistic achievement (Slovenia), the Bioart and Design Award (Netherlands), and an Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica (Austria).
www.spelapetric.org
Supported by 15.Bezirk, Stadt Wien & BKA
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ARTIST TALKS:
Photos by Niko Havranek
