EXHIBITIONS

 

Guy Ben-Ary – Nervoplastica

Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art - 1 Jaskółcza Str., Gdańsk - Dolne Miasto

Opening: 31 May 2015, 6 pm

Exhibition opened: 31.05 – 14.06.2015

Curator: Ryszard W. Kluszczyński

Coordination: Anna Szynwelska

 

Co-operation from Intercollegiate Faculty of Biotechnology UG&MUG Department:

prof. Ewa Łojkowska

dr Anna Kawiak

The projects presented at the "Nervoplastica" exhibition were researched and developed at SymbioticA - Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts at The School of Anatomy, Physiology & Human Biology, The University of Western Australia.

 

The meeting with curator, artists and invitated guests - Fine Art Academy, Targ Węglowy 1, 1 June, 6 pm

 

Guy Ben-Ary during fifteen years of his practice have been combining the creative art with neurology. His projects, carried out in collaboration with scientists and other artists, balance between bioart and new media art. In his works, cultured neural networks play a role of the living component remaining in the interactive relationship with the technical, digital and robotic items. Exhibition Nervoplastica shows three examples of cultural works which use neuronal cultures - a kind of brain resulting from bioengineering treatments. In-Potentia, the work by Guy Ben-Ary and Kerstin Hudson, is a sculpture using cultured brain. In the installation The Living Screen, created together with Tanya Visocevic, living cells are integrated into the structure of the cinematographic camera, fulfilling the function of the screen there. In the installation Snowflake, realized together with Boryana Rossa, neural network composed of rat’s cells is stimulated with snowflake image in order to create the memory or dream of the snowflake. All three works are examples of hybrid relationship of art and science. They transfer neural forms grown in the laboratory to cultural sphere as art projects, inviting the audience to experience and reflect on new post-biological reality. Besides those two works, exhibition will also include submitted documentation of author’s other works, creative installation - MEART – Semi-living Artist and Silent Barrage, together with the drawings.

 

 

 

Patrick Tresset – Human Traits

Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art - 1 Jaskółcza Str., Gdańsk - Dolne Miasto

31.05 – 05.07.2015

Curator: Ryszard W. Kluszczyński

Coordination: Anna Szynwelska

 

 

Exhibition of French artist and scientist Patrick Tresset deals with the issues of human and artificial creativity, and our relationship with the new generation of machines. His works are robotic forms, which, thanks to the use of prepared for this purpose computer programs, are able to draw portraits. Tresset, after several years of artistic activity as a painter and illustrator, having lost capability of this kind of creative work in 2003, began the study of computer and robotic systems that would be able to take a similar form of activity, while retaining his distinctive artistic style. The result of these studies are presented within the exhibition. 3 Robots Named Paul draw portraits of exhibition’s visitors. Paul – IX is a robot drawing still life from observation. Peter is busy with drawing signs and erasing them afterwards. Its activity is stimulated by events taking place in the room, which can make him excited or bored or depressed. All three robotic systems create artifacts, as well as carry out performances. They are works of art and at the same time they create art. Their creative activity develops in the space between art, computer science, robotics and artificial intelligence.

 

Project supported by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. The exhibition is a part of a project supported by EEG funds from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway as well as local resources within the framework of the “Promotion of Diversity in Culture and Arts within European Cultural Heritage” Programme.

 

Damien Hirst – New Religion

Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art - 1 Jaskółcza Str., Gdańsk - Dolne Miasto

24.07 – 27.09.2015

Curators: Paul Stolper, Linsey Young, Anna Szynwelska

 

Throughout the course of Damien Hirst’s career, belief has been at the heart of his work. Early medicine cabinets such as God, 1989, pitched an unquestioning belief in scientific rationalism – the conviction that pills can cure you – against the more subjective belief in religion and the redemptive healing power of God. This equation gave form to Hirst’s disappointment that a belief in art did not exist in a similar manner to the way that God or science might be unquestionably believed in. Without this belief in art, any sense of meaning is dissipated; it being through the artifice of art and its formal structures that the illusions of life can be recognised.

‘New Religion’, Hirst’s latest project, is grounded in belief and extends this outlook in new directions. The different elements that make up ‘New Religion’ form a chapel dedicated to desire, a desire to keep mortality at bay but which can’t help confront death at the same time. Belief in religion and medicine is grounded in this desire, confirmed here by its representation as art; where, for instance, The Holy Trinity is presented as a pie-chart that through logic attempts to prove the wholly unprovable.