Low Realisms with Ed Atkins: XXIX CSAV—Artists’ Research Laboratory

Invited artist: Ed Atkins / Director: Annie Ratti / Associate Directors: Lorenzo Benedetti and Gregorio Magnani.

CSAV—Artists’ Research Laboratory is an experimental platform designed to stimulate formal and informal discussions and exchanges among artists of different generations and nationalities. It aims to explore different forms of art making through un-institutional teaching methods and presents a highly flexible structure, which will be shaped in dialogue with the invited artist. Between fifteen and twenty young artists from different countries will be selected. They will attend daily workshops and seminars run by the invited artist and guest lecturers.

The application and laboratory are free of charge. All applications should be completed via FAR’s website. Apply here.

‘Realism’ is often presumptively pessimistic. An avowal of ‘unidealised reality’ often resembles pessimistic idealism. What, then, might a contemporary unidealised realism in art look like or feel like? What role do pessimism and optimism play in determining how realistic a representation of reality is? What about the dynamics of virtuosity and impoverishment, as wielded by the artist? Does depth inevitably correspond with truth? Should this be understood literally? Are clothes perfidious? Is this slick surface right here any less realistic than the copious, unknown dark gubbins beneath it? Is conflict intrinsic to dramatic realism? Is grittiness a grift? What could an expanded conception of digital realism entail?

Ed Atkins will host workshops, readings, viewings, discussions, performances, and guest spots, thinking through some of the less traversed, more convoluted kinds of artistic realism. Starting from the debatable assumption that colloquial, presumptive realism tends towards the pessimistic or depressive, Atkins and his guests will chart a spotty course through historical realism, naturalism, realisticness, and existentialism before veering into dirty, banal, anti-illusionary, postmodern, minimalist, and subtractive realisms—realisms that are excessively artificial but which feel, precisely because of their artificiality, exceptionally true to life—real.

Ed Atkins is a British artist based in Copenhagen, best known for his realistic computer-generated videos that expose and scrutinise otherwise inaccessible feelings through the profanity of their artifice. In recent years, he has presented solo exhibitions at Kunsthaus Bregenz, Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, Castello di Rivoli in Turin, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Serpentine Gallery in London, among many others. A survey show at Tate Britain is set to open in spring 2025, featuring the premiere of his first feature-length film, Nurses Come and Go, but None for Me, co-written and directed with Steven Zultanski. In April 2025, Atkins’ first book of non-fiction, Flower, will be published, following two previous books of prose poetry, Old Food (2019) and A Primer for Cadavers (2016)—all from Fitzcarraldo Editions.