Eyes are Responding

Responsive Eyes is up for 2 months now. You can read a few interviews with me about it on Dazed and New Art Network

I also talk about it in a massive 3000 word feature I've written for It's Nice That Issue 8 on virtual and real art space.


(Images above are still from the gifs from Anthony Antonellis's works CMYRGB)

Count down to Responsive Eyes

Back from NYC and Marrakech marathon and mere days til I open the Responsive Eyes!

Responsive Eyes curated by Francesca Gavin
Jacob’s Island Gallery 56 Butler’s & Colonial Wharf 10–11 Shad Thames London SE1 2PY

15 March — 12 May 2012
Exhibition opening: Wednesday 14 March, 6–8 pm

Anthony Antonellis, Paul B Davis, Thomas Lock, Sara Ludy, Mike Ruiz, Lucy Stokton, Mark Titchner, Artie Vierkant

The Responsive Eye was an exhibition held at MoMA in New York in 1965. It brought together artworks by so-called ‘Op’ and minimalist artists such as Bridget Riley, Josef Albers, Viktor Vasarely and Almir Mavignier. The curator William Seitz described the show an ‘exhibition that would indicate an activity, not a kind of art’. In the catalogue text Seitz writes, ‘The eye responds most directly when nonessentials such as freely modulated shape and tone, brush gestures and impasto are absent.’ He argued this was ‘non-objective perceptual art’, art that ‘exists primarily for its impact on reception rather than for conceptual examination... Ideological focus has moved from the outside world, passed through the work as object, and entered the incompletely explored region area between the cornea and the brain.’
This exhibition is best documented in an early Brian De Palma documentary posted on the Internet — our magic modern perception box, our constant optical illusion machine. The aim of the show was to use the way De Palma depicts viewers responding to these artworks — both physically and in commentary — as a way to examine how technology-infused contemporary artworks play with our relationship to the screen.

In De Palma’s 1966 film the psychologist Rudolph Arnheim observes, ‘Vision is based on discrimination. Vision is based on the distinction between things that are different from each other. If you put the human mind in a situation where this distinction is no longer there you get your brain in a situation in which the eye jumps the track. I think this is what gives you this profoundly disturbing effect.’ The comment could easily apply to how we relate and view the constant influx of movement, imagery, sound and informational content in modern screen life. Rather than an exhibition of contemporary optical artworks, the aim is to explore ideas about the process of looking, and our mental and physical relationship with art. Just as the sixties generation was awed by the experience of these ‘retinal’ works, so gifs, digital paintings or videos make us reexamine our feelings about the screen, how we look and what we are looking at.

Mike Kelley Lost Angeles

I'm off to NYC in a couple of days and away for two week. Despite being in a right muddle for those in LA this is what I'd recommend...

Four cities, four shows

1) Laura Buckley at Cell Project Space in London


2)Adam Curtis at e-flux in New York


3) Keller/Kosmas (Aids-3D) at Kraupa-Tuskany in Berlin


4)Teenage Hallucination curated by Dennis Cooper and Gisele Vienne at Centre Pompidou in Paris

Keep and eye open from the explosion of editorial from me in the coming places: In the beautifully redesigned Dazed I've got a feature and interview with Thomas Ruff, interview with Santiago Sierra, piece on Dennis Cooper, and profile on Hannah Perry. There's also a huge 3000 word piece in the forthcoming Its Nice That, a column on the the rise of acid house smiley faces in contemporary art for House, and an exciting interview with someone I'm waiting to announce in Sleek...

Tonight's Mountain Action

In honour of tonight when I warm up for KINDNESS at Summit Going On, here are three mountain songs. Only one of these is an actual good song. The other two are hilarious either aurally or visually.... guess which?

Saturday Come Saturday Come Saturday

SUMMIT'S GOING ON

WHEN Saturday 11 February 8pm - 3am

WHERE PASSION (251 Amhurst Road, Dalston)

WHO DJs Kindness (DJ set)
Naomi//
Frank Tope
Fran Gavin (YES I'M DJing)
Kate Hutch

+ An uber RAFFLE with prizes including tickets to Bestival, Dazed and TimeOut subscriptions, Laurence King books, a Whistles handbag and coat, Agent Provacateur goodie bag, dinner for two at Shoreditch House and The Paradise...amongst many other things...

Ticket price: £5

ALL PROCEEDS going to CHARITY - we're Doing It For The Kids...Company

If you can't come, please donate here: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/EmmaKLSutton
I'm raising money for Kids Company's Heart Yard project by climbing Kilimanjaro.
Every little really does help but please give generously.

Here's a link to the first thing I ever heard about the amazing and totally inspirational Camila Batmanghelidjh who heads up Kids Company (her Radio 4 Desert Island Discs):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/f6e5cff6