Electric

Daniel Birnbaum, Director of Acute Art, has curated a new virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) section for Frieze New York, entitled Electric. The exhibition includes works by Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, Anish Kapoor, Koo Jeong A, the Städelschule Architecture Class (SAC), R. H. Quaytman, Rachel Rossin, and Timur Si-Qin. Two programmes, Alternating Current (AC) and Direct Current (DC), will alternate every hour.

“When a new medium emerges and is employed by artists there appears to be a window of a few years that allows for free experimentalism. For augmented reality and virtual reality that period would seem to be right now. Electric presents a number of artists of different generations, such as Rachel Rossin and Anish Kapoor, who make use of the new technical tools. Some of the works included reference works of art, such as Marcel Duchamp’s The Large Glass, that appears to have anticipated dimensions that have become visible today. Others explore entirely new immersive possibilities.” –Daniel Birnbaum.

Visitors will experience Electric using headsets available at the booth, and via the Acute Art app, which makes the exhibition accessible to a global audience.

Highlights from Electric at Frieze New York include:

Anish Kapoor, Into Yourself, Fall
Anish Kapoor’s first virtual reality work, Into Yourself, Fall, takes users on a journey through the human body, experiencing the sensation of falling into yourself via the immersive headset. Kapoor’s work seeks to simulate vertigo as a descent inside the human body, depicting a labyrinth of the inner workings of the self.

Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, It Will End in Stars
It Will End in Stars is an immersive virtual reality experience combining Nathalie Djurberg’s distinctive sculpted figures with black and white charcoal drawings, text, and an unsettling soundtrack by Hans Berg. A dream-like vision ends in a sprawling star-scape, reiterating the mystical, nature of the work and reiterating the landscape’s dream-like nature.

Städelschule Architecture Class (SAC), The Third Glass
The Third Glass is a speculative, spatial-digital object based on Marcel Duchamp’s The Large Glass, produced by the Städelschule Architecture Class (SAC). Each element in Duchamp’s The Large Glass becomes a 3D form, animated in accordance with notes in Duchamp’s Green Box. A computer software application for VR places the visitor totally immersed within The Third Glass.

Rachel Rossin, Man Mask
Commissioned by Rhizome and the New Museum for the exhibition First Look: Artists’ VR, Man Mask is a guided meditation through landscapes taken from the game Call of Duty: Black Ops, drained of violence and transformed into an ethereal dream world.

R. H. Quaytman, + x, Chapter 34
R. H. Quaytman’s work combines modernist and formalist approaches in art and architecture, with an awareness of the spiritual, sometimes mystical, dimensions present in 20th century aesthetics. Inspired by the imaginary cosmos of the Swedish artist and mystic, Hilma af Klint, Quaytman uses VR to make accessible elements in af Klint’s work that were intended to lead the viewer into new levels of awareness.

Timur Si-Qin, A New Protocol VR v 2.0
In A New Protocol VR v 2.0, Timur Si-Qin introduces viewers to the foundational cosmology of New Peace - a new articulation of secular spirtuality for the 21st century. The digitally generated landscape signifies the conception of an all-inclusive wilderness where the simulated is just another branching on the tree of reality—beyond the dualities of the organic vs the synthetic, the spiritual vs the material, and the natural vs the cultural. 

Koo Jeong A, Prerequisites 7
Koo Jeong A’s ephemeral works highlight seemingly mundane everyday items, which often border on the invisible. Her precise drawings explore the poetics of everyday life in humorous ways. In the medium of AR, her figures take on new agency and in a dimension outside our physical space they seem to be alive. For Frieze New York, visitors will be able to animate and interact with her sketches through QR codes installed in various locations throughout the fair.

To download the Acute Art app visit Apple Store or Android.