25 May 2008

Manfred Mohr & Gabriel Orozco

ART STATIONS PREVIEW – IT FROM BIT – an exhibition of Gabriel Orozco and Manfred Mohr's works is going to inaugurate ART STATIONS in Poznan on May 31.

Located in a new venue designed by renowned Japanese architect Tadao Ando in the park neighboring Old Brewery Business and Art Center, the newly opened modern arts center ART STATIONS is going to perform the function of both a museum and an institution devoted to promoting and selling art, understood here not only as fine art, but also as fashion, design, film and dance.
It is going to serve as a venue for the presentation of ART STATIONS' activities (the performative, exhibition and multimedia programs) as well as store permanently the collection of Grazyna Kulczyk.

Opening ART STATIONS, the exhibition ART STATIONS PREVIEW - IT FROM BIT is going to present the works of two artists: Gabriel Orozco (Mexican) and Manfred Mohr (German), who use the mathematical algorithm and employ computers in their art.

Gabriel Orozco (b. 1962) is considered one of the leading artists of his generation. Since 1990 he has traveled extensively and lived in various parts of the world, which has come to constitute a fundamental feature of his art. In a similar manner, the artist freely explores the areas of painting, video, photography, sculpture and installation. He has participated trice in the Venice Biennale and twice in Documenta Kassel. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the world's best-known museums and galleries: MOCA, Los Angeles, Hirschorn Museum, Washington, Serpentine Galery or White Cube, London.
The Samurai Tree, Orozco's latest extensive cycle - to be presented in Poznan - reveals his fascination with the game of chess and, above all, the 'Knight's move' (or as the artist puts it the 'Samurai move') – an unusual algorithm of moves which unlike other chess pieces can produce a circle on the chessboard.

Manfred Mohr (b. 1938) is, on the other hand, a pioneer of algorithmic and computer art. He is known historically as the first artist to present an entire exhibition of works made with the use of the computer and the algorithm. The event in question took place in 1971 in Musee d'art Moderne. At present, Mohr's works can be found in the collections of such museums as: Copenhagen Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Museum Ludwig, Coln, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Museum of Art in Lodz.
For almost three decades Mohr had been creating only black-and-white compositions (like the presented in Poznan P-350/E from 1984 and P-155/cl from 1994), to introduce color to his works in 1998. In 2002 he designed and built a small PC to run his programs: 'space.color' and 'subsets'. This invention allows the display of colorful images on LCD flat panels in a slow motion. One of such works (P-1011/C subset motion from 2005) is going to be presented in Poznan.

ART STATIONS PREVIEW - IT FROM BIT exhibition is an occasion to confront a number of questions: Is one who creates algorithms which then generate a work of art still an artist or merely a programmer? Or maybe the 'authorship' belongs to the computer which processes the data and draws the work in its final form? If we treat an artist-algorithmician is a legitimate artist, what then constitutes the 'creation'? The making of the algorithm?
Those who wish to seek the answers to these questions are invited to visit the exhibition of works by Gabriel Orozco and Manfred Mohr from Grazyna Kulczyk Collection ART STATIONS PREVIEW - IT FROM BIT.

The exhibition is open from May 31 to the end of September 2008.

ART STATIONS PREVIEW - IT FROM BIT
Manfred Mohr & Gabriel Orozco
Stary Browar Gallery (ul. Polwiejska 42, 61-888 Poznan, POLAND)
31 May – 30 Sept 2008
opening: 31.05.2008 at 7 p.m
opening hours: Mon-Sun, 12 -7 p.m
curators: Piotr Bazylko, Piotr Krajewski
scholarly curator: prof. Ireneusz Sierocki
www.grazynakulczyk.com