English
Deutsch
until 01.10. | #3530ARTatBerlin | Luisa Catucci Gallery presents in collaboration with fx(hash) from 2. September 2022 (Opening: 01.09.) the exhibition Improbable Iterations with NFT by Finnish artists Antti Pussinen & Joonas Toivonen AKA Toiminto. The gallery also shows a selection of their generative and computative works, pre NFT era.
By developing processes out of the ordinary to catch shapes and forms normally considered impossible to be seen – like sound – these artists go beyond the traditional way of the creative work, approaching it more like Chaos scientists-mathematicians than visual artists. In fact, Chaos is an important component in the generative process of these two artists, and has undoubtedly a strong impact on the aesthetic side, due to the deterministic random effect embedded in the code, that will differently generate artwork elements, composition, colors and details at each execution of the script. This generates unique variations within the same piece.
As the title of the show says: Improbable Iterations.
Despite the Chaos factor, the NFT artworks by Pussinen and Toivonen, show not only to be a natural development of their twenty-year artistic research, but also to be deeply rooted in the classic history of art, with inevitable references to the work of Vera Molnar, pioneer of algorithm-abstraction, computer and generative-art, and with atmospheres, patterns, and nuances of Suprematism and Cubism taste for Pussinen, and of puntilism-impressionist taste in the defragmented reality of Toivonen.
Antti Pussinen & Joonas Toivonen
The society’s obsession with worshiping/fearing technology, makes generative art one of the hot-topics of the contemporary art scene. Among the current interest in NFT and generative art from a technological and philosophical point of view, one will most likely end up in a discussion about finance, investments, consumption, cryptocurrencies, risks, controversy and liquidity of the NFT market. This kind of talk, reinforced by a general caution dictated by the instability and complexity of the cryptocurrencies, often awakens a fear of a Ponzi-Schemes taste, reinforced by the volatility of the tech-scene permanently running after The Next Thing.
This generates a fundamental doubt: can NFT be considered legitimate pieces of art? Does it make sense to start or have a collection of Non-Fungible Tokens? In the gallery´s opinion, absolutely. As long as the final result responds to the same parameters for an oil painting, a drawing, or a sculpture to be considered a piece of art. Obviously, it is valid also the opposite statement: as not every oil painting, drawing, or sculpture is a valid and legitimate piece of art, so is for NFT.
It is an old debate, when technology permits the production of images that weren’t possible to be realized previously, if the new products are allowed to climb the Mount Olympus of the art world. Isn’t after all the NFT art scene a new ecosystem creating new interactions between artists, art lovers, collectors, curators, like it has previously been with photography and video-art? Once again, in the gallery´s opinion, absolutely.
This new scene radically changed the approach to collecting art. Prices are mainly staying in the affordable range, and there is no need for big space and big walls to display a whole collection, a monitor will do. No need for storage space, except the cloud.
The downside, whenever we face art that doesn’t take much time to be produced, is that we fall into overproduction. This, accompanied by people’s egotistical/voyeuristic/exhibitionist behavior generated by social medias, accompanied by the hope for “easy” coins and possibly fame, leads people to publish every single thing without making any selection. Result: there are tonnes of low quality images out in the net, saturating our eyes. Navigating these waters isn’t easy!
That is why Luisa Catucci Gallery believes that selecting and curating NFT shows is a duty of a contemporary art gallery, interested in new media. Because the NFT scene itself changed so radically since its recent beginning, and today, parallelly to tonnes of pixel-art and tokens of debatable taste and aesthetic with no – or almost none – reference to the history of arts, there is a growing scene of gorgeous, stunning, meaningful pieces.
Opening: Thursday, 1. September 2022, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Exhibition dates: Friday, 2. September – Saturday, 1. October 2022
To the Gallery
Image caption title: Antti Pussinen & Joonas Toivonen, courtesy of Luisa Catucci Gallery
Exhibition Antti Pussinen & Joonas Toivonen – Luisa Catucci Gallery | Zeitgenössische Kunst Berlin – Contemporary Art – Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
