PNCA’s Feldman Gallery Presents Eva and Franco Mattes
October 23, 2014
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Lisa Radon, Communications Specialist
lradon@pnca.edu 971-255-5528
Becca Biggs, Director of Communications
bbiggs@pnca.edu 971-255-5511
PNCA’s Feldman Gallery Presents Eva and Franco Mattes
Portland, OR, October 23, 2014 — The Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space at Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) presents Breaking Banality: The Dysfunction of Remediation, an exhibition by Eva and Franco Mattes, opening with a reception on First Thursday, November 6, 2014 and running through January 10, 2015. For the exhibition, whose title was created by an online random exhibition title generator, the Brooklyn-based Italian duo will present ten reiterations of one performance from their series “BEFNOED - By Everyone, For No One, Every Day,” for which they commission anonymous workers to realize webcam performances. The Mattes’ hire performers through online crowdsourcing services and post the resulting videos to many of the more obscure social networks around the world. The artists regularly post links to new videos at befnoed.tumblr.com. These works are in the lineage of Fluxus event scores and more recently Hans Ulrich Obrist’s instruction-based project, “Do It.” For this exhibition, to view the videos, visitors will be forced in awkward positions, becoming themselves, if just for a few seconds, performers, and underlying how the act of viewing is in itself performative.
For another work in the show, an image, resulting from an internet search for the words "worn out," was printed by online services on various objects. The objects were then delivered by mail directly to the venue, so neither the artists nor the curator have seen the final works.
The duo’s provocative digital works have previously included a staged suicide filmed by webcam, a slideshow of 10,000 photos stolen from personal computers, and reenactments of well-known performance art works in online videogames.
“Eva and Franco Mattes’ subversive conceptual works delve into the obscure corners and more grim aspects of the internet and the ways it both connects and distances users,” says Mack McFarland, Director of Exhibitions at PNCA. “We are thrilled to be working with two of the cardinal Net Art practitioners and expect the exhibition to ignite valuable conversations around our digitally fabricated and recorded selves and the ways we interact at a distance now.”
Exhibition | Eva and Franco Mattes (a.k.a. 0100101110101101.ORG)
November 6, 2014 – January 10, 2015
Opening Reception
First Thursday, November 6, 2014, 6-8pm
Lecture | Franco Mattes
Wednesday, November 5, 2014, 6:30pm
Eva and Franco Mattes
Eva and Franco Mattes (1976) are an artist duo originally from Italy, working in Brooklyn, NY. Their medium is a combination of Internet, video and performance. Their work explores ethical and moral issues when people interact at distance, especially through social media, creating situations where it is difficult to distinguish reality from a simulation.
Writer Randall Packer wrote: "Eva and Franco Mattes, enfant terribles of Net Art and now godparents of the digital natives (they set the stage for the erosion of privacy long before the emergence of social media), have been exposing all aspects of the digital life – the embarrassing, the narcissistic, the fearless, the gross, the voyeuristic, the insipid, the heartless, and the just plain stupid – revealing the underbelly of our hyper-connected lives".
Mattes’ work has been exhibited at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (2013); Site Santa Fe (2012); Sundance Film Festival (2012); PS1, New York (2009); Performa, New York (2007, 2009); ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum (2009); National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2008); The New Museum, New York (2005) and Manifesta 4, Frankfurt (2002). In 2001 they were among the youngest artists ever included in the Venice Biennale.
They have also held conferences at universities, festivals and museums, including Columbia University, New York; RISD, Providence; New York University; Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh; College Art Association, New York; Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; MAXXI, Rome and Musee d’Art Moderne, Paris. They are founders and co-directors of the international festival The Influencers, held annually at the CCCB, Barcelona, Spain (2004-ongoing).
The Mattes have received grants from the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde; ICC, Tokyo, and were awarded the New York Prize 2006 from the Italian Academy at Columbia University.
About the Feldman Gallery + Project Space
The Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space at Pacific Northwest College of Art is dedicated to the work of national and international contemporary artists. Directed by Mack McFarland, the gallery mounts five exhibitions a year that highlight 21st century art and design practices and support the College’s curriculum.
About Pacific Northwest College of Art
As Oregon’s flagship college of art and design since 1909, Pacific Northwest College of Art has helped shape Oregon’s visual arts landscape for more than a century. PNCA students study with award-winning faculty in small classes. In the last seven years, PNCA has doubled both the student body and full-time faculty, quadrupled its endowment, and added innovative undergraduate and graduate programs. PNCA is now embarking on its boldest venture yet by establishing the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design as an anchor for the College’s vision of a new campus home on Portland’s North Park Blocks. Focusing on the transformative power of creativity, the capital campaign, Creativity Works Here, was launched in June 2012 with a lead gift from The Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation of $5 million. PNCA’s new home will be a bustling hub for creativity and entrepreneurship, reflecting the influential role of art and design in our 21st century economy – both in Portland and beyond. For more information: pnca.edu.