With the installation, director and videographer Valerie Wolf Gang offers an alternative to the simplified, commercial, degrading and non-intelligent TV content we encounter on a daily basis.
The viewer is invited to sit in front of a TV set offering a calm, fun and relaxing alternative to today’s TV content, which is full of shameless advertising campaigns and simplified programming. Instead of reality show contestants, each monitor contains plants that form a miniature landscape, relaxing the viewer in the armchair and bringing a real piece of nature into the comfort of one’s living room or the exhibition space.
The artist treats the set of living organisms as a video clip, in which she seeks compositions, colours, textures and consequently feelings. The very slow motion clip that lives inside the TV screen is also accompanied by a soundtrack depicting a unique story that transports each viewer into the humorous, relaxed, yet critical world of the artist’s creativity.
After the conclusion of the exhibition, two of the installations will be for sale. They can thus become a part of the purchasing company’s collection, with the art piece potentially changing the world outside the exhibition space through the financial support to a charity organisation that helps the most vulnerable members of our society on a daily basis.
Valerie Wolf Gang (1990) received an M.A. in Film and Contemporary Art Practices at the University of Nova Gorica School of Arts in 2015. During her studies, she also studied in the Czech Republic (Filmová a televizní fakulta akademie múzických umění v Praze – FAMU) and Portugal (Escola Superior de Artes e Design de Caldas Da Rainha – ESAD). She has held artistic residencies in the U.S., Singapore, Austria, Serbia, the Netherlands, China etc. Her work has been featured in major group and solo exhibitions abroad and at home, and she has received numerous exhibitions and awards.
She develops her seemingly humorous installations with an explicit, sharp social critique of our time and events. The multi-layered intermedia language she has shaped through years of work serves not just as a reminder for everyday critical reflection but also turns the field of “high culture” into a dystopic environment that approaches/distances itself from contemporary society through the individual’s experience. Currently, she works in Ljubljana and lectures at the University of Nova Gorica, as well as hosts workshops on film education and contemporary art practices in cooperation with various independent associations at home and abroad.
The Solo Exhibition Cycle is a series of exhibition projects in the upper lobby of Kino Šiška, prepared each year by a curator of the younger generation.
Curated by: Tia Čiček.
Organisation: Kino Šiška.
Production: Kino Šiška and UV Arthouse.
Technical support: Urša Bonelli Potokar.
