"Samaúma"

 Imaginary Choreographies for Extended Reality  and Experimental Opera Stagings. This is an ongoing research and development project.


Produced with the kind support of Midjourney technologies

Extended Reality Choreographies

From the series ELEMENTS-COMPOSITE LIVING ARCHITECTURE

x325-1s

2021 Winter collection

The Shell Sea

In his novel Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust defines the notion of involuntary memory by describing how remembrance deeply engraved in the past, evoked by the taste of a madeleine dipped in tea, occupies the narrator's present reality without his conscious effort. Referencing Proust's 'episode of the madeleine' with its title, the project Tea Soaked Madeleines explores my family's emotional history in order to trace the line that threads our past and defines our present. As stimuli of involuntary memories, mundane objects acquire symbolic significance while serving as metaphorical representations of the structure of memory. Internal relationships and personal tragedies interweaved with generational traumas of several wars make the narrative layers of this work and reveal the intricate connections between past and present.

untitled (Tea Soaked Madeleines)

To express a head full. What to remember and what to forget.

A head full

Digital print serving as a thumbnail of a fine art print 

ynk: coconut watered rum

Untitled

The project and exhibition ‘’Sensitive obscurities: exploring the queer (sub)conscious’’ comes from a deep desire to connect with the inner struggles, and then ultimately joys, of the queer body. By exploring the inner works of the experiences of five members of the large spectrum, that is the queer community in Rotterdam, the work connects with feelings of anger, loneliness, and abandonment. The reality of living within a queer body that is Othered, and often either put on a holy pedestal or seen as a devilish mistake. By not running away from the underlying abjection of these feelings, visual artist Rik Versteeg has embarked on a journey to create a storytelling exhibition, consensually exploring these very human journeys through a queer and post-feminist lens.

By applying values of radical intersectionality and with a strong focus on care, Licka Lolly, Roberto Angels, Lillith de Ville, Xiang Ye Yueng, and Fae, have been working directly with Rik to complete this visual journey, while also focusing on aftercare and support towards the participants, as vulnerability becomes an almost outspoken dance between the artist’s lens and the humans in front of it. By using a multidisciplinary approach that combines photography, fashion, film, and sound, we attempt a journey through honesty into the deep resonances of the vulnerable, by harnessing and reclaiming the forbidden.

Fae - Smile you're Queer

C6.2021

Once, I passed barns without a glance. Now I notice these ordinary structures for the extraordinary variety of architecture from unnoted architects and for being stalwarts of the rural. When all else falls the barn stands. 

The Roundup barns encircle to represent shelter, protection, and endurance. They enclose and embrace in itself the landscape. They, like people, are both individual and part of a larger landscape. 

These are all Arkansas barns captured in my haunts about the state as I scan ever back and forth, looking for gems to photograph. Some were easily found and accessible. Others I can add my own story to their history.  

To act easily and quickly in sometimes sudden stops in the middle of nowhere to capture barns, I use a non-professional Canon EOS M5 camera and basic lenses. Once I take my barns home, each one comes down to several decisions using Photoshop and Lightroom to bring out the barns natural textures and colors, what part of the photo needs to be creamed out to create the empty sky space surrounding each final project, what part of the barn do I leave in color, carefully outlining the details to be left alone, how to best represent the rest in black and white so it is not completely lost when I finally “encircle” the barns using an app not typically intended for professional art. 

They were shortlisted in the Siena Creative Awards and Refuge won 1st in the multi-state 12th Annual Newport Delta Awards. Many of them are currently awaiting results in online international competitions. Their non-abstract counterparts Honor Guard won 2022 Monovisions Awards Honorable Mention for Architectural Series.  

The series shows well individually or together in 12” prints.

The work was inspired by a photo by unknown author. The photo shows Osney Lane, Oxford, UK and in the background the old Morrell's Brewery with its famous chimney. In the foreground a man sits on a chair and contemplates the "other world" that is not necessarily the afterlife but rather all that is beyond our knowledge, our consciousness. In this moment of Contemplation one gets insight about things we usually do not even notice - the deep cosmos and the place of human in it etc. 

Contemplation

Ink-Dyed

People 

Escadrille 9090Q

A highly coterminous creation of a neon sculpture from an ongoing series originally envisioned during recurring REM dreams of  artist Kyle Yip.

He achieved a significant breakthrough in 2017, when he discovered how to consolidate his studies of psychology  with his  art practice within different states of conscious awareness — from different stages of restful awareness and sleeping to dreaming. He possesses the unique ability to perceive then examine artworks which emerge during his dreams in vivid detail.  Images that once appeared immaterial are meticulously reverse-engineered into tactile, obdurate objects.  His research in therapy, rigorous background in classical animation, and avant-garde art practices began to coalesce into new cross-identifactory modes of making art.

This work explores the cosmological and mythological influences within early 1930's classically animated Disney films.  The series, "Close your eyes, make a wish and let your dreams come true." is quoted from the artist's sister's twin sized bed sheet from Disney's Cinderella franchise. The North Star is a ternary star system composed of a primary star offset by two smaller circulating twin stars. The primary star is symbolic of Cinderella's guiding light during a phase of self-doubt and oppression, characterized by the solar eclipse. The manifested dream sculptures represent the "American Dream" itself, and contain their latent meaning. 

Kyle Yip recognizes his work as both the diagnosis of a cultural condition, but also an opportunity for viewers to meditate on t.heir dreams and celebrate childhood nostalgia

Dream Sculpture A1

FRAGMENTA is an initiative to present contemporary art in the form of pop-up exhibitions in the public spaces on the Maltese Islands. As a project space without a physical space, FRAGMENTA’s mission is to offer experiences in form of artistic events, which happen in different locations or settings in and around Malta, lasting a maximum duration of 24 hours. FRAGMENTA has been organizing events and exhibitions since 2013.

Each exhibition is curated by Bettina Hutschek, who also determines setting and location. The exhibitions are born through a collaborative process between FRAGMENTA and the artist.

We consider the elements we are presenting to be “art”, most of the time, but this is not even necessarily the case. In the end, we do not know what “art” really is, or how to define it. We simply want to show something beautiful, something intelligent, or something strong. Or ideally all of these put together.

Curator, Founder, Organizer and Location Scout: Bettina Hutschek
From 2016 to 2018, FRAGMENTA Malta was supported by Valletta 2018 as part of the cultural programme of the European Capital of Culture.

FRAGMENTA Malta is a registered Voluntary Organisation: VO/1171.

FRAGMENTA Malta

With the idea that the materials themselves engage in reflection and pose questions about the situation of the city’s speculation, the artist creates a series of key rings with the rubble of Berlin. These pieces and the placement of one of them on an overhead projector are based on the idea of the Souvenir as the consumed image of the city as a product. The value of the key rings plays an important role as it will always be linked to the price of the square meter of the site, determined by the real estate market.


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