This is a two fold project by Colombian and French artists Iván Argote and Pauline Bastard consisting of the exhibition "Rising Action" - featuring the video programme "Home Cinema" alongside an ensemble of installation and sculptural pieces - and followed by a performance entitled "Born to Curate" at the initiative of both artists which will take place on the 26th January 2012.
Meeting in 2007 in Paris, Iván and Pauline form an artist couple whose individual practices develop in parallel to joint projects based on concepts of presentations, curatorial events, residencies and other performative games for which the artists rewrite the rules. The exhibition "Rising Action" unites for the first time in the UK their common vision of the city as a theatrical playground - putting in place playful environments where tricks, hijackings and other narrative displacement and interventions initiate pictures of consumerism, humanism, poetry and action.
Iván Argote's practice deals with social, political and art historical fields through mediums as varied as video, photography, sculpture and painting. Being simultaneously the director and main actor in his work, Iván interrogates with humour the views and perspectives imposed by our social positions but also the status of an artwork and the notion of interactivity, which he addresses through a fictionalisation of the everyday.
Pauline Bastard invites us into a world where fiction and reality are entangled and at the heart of which misleading fictions reign. Through mediums such as video and sculpture, she plays with and defies narrative processes through the phenomenon of detachment, re-appropriation or semantic displacement. Popular objects and everyday materials are omnipresent in her practice, creating a complicit game with the spectator where the veracity of their fictional and dramatic potential is questioned.
"Born to Curate" is a one-night performance-based event; a sort of "curatorial battle" presented as a live game show where a panel of international curators are invited to confront each other in a friendly, fun and challenging atmosphere in front of a live audience. The event will be presented by a host from the international art scene and will be composed of five teams of two people. The game will develop around a number of themes chosen randomly by the participants who will then imagine and present an exhibition concept in a short period of time. The public is the Grand Jury of this battle and will "vote" through an applause meter which will select the teams that will go on to the final to win the "Born to Curate" trophy!
20 January - 19 February 2012
Preview: Thursday 19 January, 6-9pm
Nettie Horn, 25B Vyner Street, London, E2 9DG
Nettie Horn, 25B Vyner Street, London, E2 9DG
