AZALEAS TO ASTERISMS

A pop-up exhibit twittering between art and design, physical and virtuale spaces, and national and international contexts. 

ABOUT

The exhibition “Azaleas to Asterisms” is a pop-up exhibition project that is geared toward providing increased public visibility of artworks during the pandemic. Through a concept of making use of public space in a unique manner and by linking that space digitally to social media platforms, the “Azaleas to Asterisms” takes an important initiative in troubled times a few steps forward. The project respects the applicable Covid 19 requirements but at the same time uses the restrictions inherent in those requirements to embrace a new approach to the presentation of arts and curational practice. 

In focus are four artists: three of them are living and working in Switzerland and one is American artist living in Seoul, South Korea. The three Swiss artists provide the national context along with its embedded contrasts, while the Korea based artist provides the international context, which will provide proof of concept for the digital link of the exhibit in virtual space. This is because the point of the project is not only to give temporary visibility to current artistic production by presenting it in a space that is accessible to the public, but it is also about resourcing a method to find a completely new form of presentation in virtual space that is not subject restraints of limited temporality and availability that are in inherent in physical presentation.

By providing the physical exhibition with a virtual representation that serves as a real-time digital counterpart, the project will offer the artists back the visibly loss during the pandemic and provide them with new tools to operate as 21st century artists twittering between in virtual and physical spaces. 

ARTWORKS & ARTISTS

Although ornamental character and articulated through repetition, the artwork of Florence Aellen plays with the regularity of patterns with finesse and elegance and goes beyond the ornate pleasantries by selecting combining contrary motives and building bridges between them, radiating out a balance between objects of grace and repulsion and providing the eye with an assemblage in which universal links are portrayed. 

Following up on the belief that embroidery should develop its own visual language and in search of novel and modern implementations for the medium of embroidery, the works of Ursula Waldburger explore what is most unexpected in the genre: abstract imagery. Using interpretations of concept of resolution and pixilation in embroidery, the artist translates tradition and reinvents the art of tapestry through the process of exploring effects such as "fog" "blur" or "dissolution" into things embroidered. Offering new works of shimmering thread between modern fabrication methods and the art of traditionally embroidered image. 

The works presented by Wayne De Fremery focus on technologies of memory and loss by created three-dimensional data object to investigate the institutional systems of cultural memory that we term literature. Generated by mapping the equivalent Unicode values for each of the letters used in a poem to three-dimensional space, the resulting sculptures are not only aesthetic artworks but allow to visualize the poem's identity and allow viewers gain an understanding of it. De Fremery’s use of AR technologies makes it possible to display the models virtually and allows viewers to intimately examine the data objects in an inquisitive manner using the interface tools common to smart devices. 

The new technology work «9,8,7,6 and so on” by Arthur Clay belongs to the genre of Space Art. It explores synthetic zero-gravity environment in which artworks can float and rotate as if they were suspended in outer space and where they are subject to orbital ebbs and flows. Built up out of a collection of asterisms, the work is presented as a galactic gallery of Space Artworks that have been placed on the moon, are orbiting the earth, or are still on earth awaiting their count down. The work can only be seen by using a personal smart device and once the work is visible in the screen of a smart phone or tablet, visitors can explore the work as if they were floating in a galaxy undergoing constant change and endless variation as rotation unfolds on diverse orbital planes.