[aha] Prague Biennale - Hyperlucid

[Domenico Quaranta]

HYPERLUCID
Training to live in a new reality

Curated by: Domenico Quaranta

For: Prague Biennale 4
Karlin Hall, Thamova 8 - Praga 8
May 14 - July 26, 2009
Directors and General Curators: Helena Kontova and Giancarlo Politi
General Editor / Curatorial Advisor: Nicola Trezzi
Official website: http://www.praguebiennale.org/

ARTISTS: Alterazioni Video; Gazira Babeli; Shane Hope; Miltos Manetas;  
Gerhard Mantz; Eva and Franco Mattes; UBERMORGEN.COM; Damon Zucconi.

Reality is not the one we were used to anymore. Media infiltrate it  
more and more, and fill up our dreams, which usually come when our  
eyes are open. Wide open. In the frame of ÒExpanded PaintingÓ, H Y P E  
R L U C I D is an exhibition collecting works born on the invisible  
edge between two different levels of reality (apparent reality and  
media reality), and documenting the continuous trespassing from one  
level to the other. The walls in between are more and more porous, and  
sometimes even the more lucid gaze can't help but wonder which level  
of reality it is looking at in a particular moment. All of us had this  
feeling, in front of 9/11 pictures. Media don't produce simulacra  
anymore: they produce events, history, life. They overwhelm us with  
icons, brands, pixellated images of tortures, wars, outrages. The  
hardest fight happens there. They help us to construct new levels of  
reality, both abstract and hyperreal, and to get used to them.  
Finally, videogames are the places of our training: there, through  
more and more complex social and narrative dynamics, and through a  
photorealism which even overcomes our playing needs, we forget how to  
recognize simulation, and we exercise our brain for the next step: the  
one in which, between tangible reality, simulated reality and media  
reality there are no barriers anymore, but only the sheets,  
translucent and easy to pass through, of a chinese shadows theater. We  
took the last train to the world of Perky Pat, and there is no way to  
come back. H Y P E R L U C I D doesn't collects paintings. Here,  
painting is not a medium, but a cultural frame, a context of reference  
for the new generation of the image makers. Alterazioni Video, Gazira  
Babeli, Shane Hope, Miltos Manetas, Gerhard Mantz, Eva and Franco  
Mattes, UBERMORGEN.COM and Damon Zucconi, no longer paint: they shoot,  
they manipulate, they code, they make scripts, sometimes they fight  
with other virtual characters. Yet, in the end, they produce images.

MORE INFOS & DOWNLOADABLE IMAGES:  http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/hyperlucid.html

CATALOGUE TEXT: http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/hyperlucid/HYPERLUCID_catalogue_text.pdf


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Domenico Quaranta

mob. +39 340 2392478
email. qrndnc at yahoo.it
home. vicolo San Giorgio 18 - 25122 brescia (BS)
web. http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/

"Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Human beings are  
incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful  
beyond imagination." Albert Einstein