Volatile Reality

Volatile Reality
19 October–12 November 2023*
Gallery Novo, Laginjina 7, Pula

We are pleased to announce the opening of a guest group exhibition entitled Volatile Reality, which was created in our production and will be hosted in Pula from 19/10/2023 to 12/11/2023. The opening of the exhibition will be part of the opening of a new space for art, Gallery Novo, which will start on Thursday, October 19, 2023, at 8 p.m. and is organized by the Metamedia Association and the partner associations Atanor, Faro11 and Labin Art Express XXI.

*Due to high interest, the exhibition has been extended until 26 November 2023.

At the group exhibition, the artworks of Nataša Berk, Alice Daeun Kim, Tadej Droljc, artist name:, Nika Erjavec, Toni Soprano Meneglejte and Valerie Wolf Gang will be on display.
The curator of the exhibition is Peter Tomaž Dobrila. The organization takes place as part of the international program exchange and partnership between the associations Metamedia and KID KIBLA.

Intermedia art is increasingly positioned as interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary, as it includes not only media, but crosses various fields of art and is also connected cross-sectorally, in definitions such as art and science, art and technology, art and economy, etc., while we can understand the phrase 'art and society' as too classical, traditional, outdated and general. But it is precisely in the last-mentioned duet, with the intertwining of the singular and the plural, the use of the concrete and the abstract, emphasizing the particular as the general, that there are intersections of knowledge and behavior, experiences and findings, theories and practices, empirics and apriorisms, which either collectively and methodologically or hoppingly and randomly make up our world according to the primordial, chaos.

Chaos (Greek: χᾰ́ος) is a singular plural-meaning word and can mean the original state of existence, space, air, precipice, abyss, infinite darkness, i.e. it is our (primordial) creation that takes into account the elements of the environment and the properties of the universe. As the central protagonists – or so we think – of this free journey on spaceship Earth through the Universe or the Multiverse, we face it and them, with more, with multiUniverses. We even know something about the dimensions of the cosmic latitudes and the lengths of the star paths and their distances from our planet and the solar system, and we do not close our eyes and ears or other senses when we deal with ourselves, being and living in the environment and our connections to it, existence and journeys inward and outward.

We are all interactive beings and live in the reciprocity of our present. Memories are mirrors of the past, visions are headlights of the future. Processuality, gradualness, space-time continuum build an arc in which everything has its own meaning. Energy is converted into life through the sun's rays from photons. With physics and chemistry, light and touch, thought and action. When the general disintegrates into the elemental, which is then synthesized through sublimation processes into the real and becomes reality, the transformation of the metaphysical into the physical and further into the physicality and ethereal takes place: it becomes present, sensible, perceptible. Art is established in a (gallery) space as an artifact, in another as decoration, and in a third as an excess.

The identification of technologically based works on a common indicator is not necessary, as they can be perceived as a kind of integrated artworks. They address and talk. They open and leak. Synchronized with yourself and simultaneous with us. They simulate reality. They enter our space, or give us back what they can when we penetrate them. They trigger identity and value questions, dissect the technological basis and concept, theoretical starting points and practical implementation, expect (something) and get (what), relativize and absolutize, thematize and criticize, tell and ask, whisper and shout, they are available but actually no, they are completely idiosyncratic and brutal within algorithms and programs, they are innocent and friendly environments of our perception of the absolute and acceptance of the relative.

Homo ludens, the playing man, is the center and starting point, the essence and the core of space and overall simulation. Can the attempt to illustrate standing, existence and decay survive? With art, aesthetics and ethics – yes. With consciousness and awareness. With thought and action. By entering a work of art, walking through it, wandering and getting to know, conception and revelation, we are in a personified, intimate relationship, which we live through as an artistically codified experience and a kind of response to our involvement. Ambiental, audio-visual experience, surround and environmental bath is at the same time sauna and massage, fit-ness and loch-ness of our personal 'touch' and broader, spatial and social reflections that establish our relationship to art, objects, machines, materials, processes into the equidistant circle of our lives, which incidentally appear at the exhibition and remain in the composition of the work of art as an autonomous expression of their authorized spontaneity.

Peter Tomaž Dobrila