Five Essential Online Viewing Rooms
Now that we’re a few weeks into the imposed social distancing restrictions and non-essential business closures, the art world has adjusted to the sudden shift toward increased online presence. Galleries and museums have been digitally curating their current and upcoming exhibitions through online viewing rooms and separate portal websites. Some establishments are truly making the most of the situation and embrace the unique opportunities that digital curation offers, while others are simply providing images of their artists’ work. Let’s send some love to the ones that have flourished as they acclimate to online viewing spaces.
The Wrong
Screenshot of a stream on thewrong.tv, playing Kate Armstrong, Ways of Something, Episode 4, Minute 19.
Since 2013, The Wrong has promoted digital content in the arts. With its intentionally stripped-down, text-heavy website, The Wrong links readers to a variety of digital rabbit holes to fall into, evoking that Web 1.0 nostalgia we didn’t know we craved until we adapted to constantly cycling through the same four sites all day. Recently, The Wrong has started live-streaming to promote digital works featured in their past biennales. Their channel, thewrong.tv, showcases about 100 time-based and new media works across four 24/7 streaming platforms.
Silicon Valet
Screenshot of Well Now WTF? featuring a work by Molly Soda.
Silicon Valet is a self-proclaimed “parking lot” for digital art and expanded practice. On April 4th, one of their parking spaces was occupied indefinitely by the new online exhibition, Well Now WTF?, curated by Faith Holland, Lorna Mills, and Wade Wallerstein. Well Now WTF? features over 90 artists with gif and moving image-based practices. Divvied up into 9 thematic “rooms”, the work featured in Well Now WTF? renews the aesthetic of “Old Web” forums and message boards that had been pushed away to make way for platforms such as Pinterest, Tumblr, and Instagram. Here you can experience the revival of fragmented Net Art communities by embracing old-school dithered gifs, embellished Blingee-style banners, and low-fi video art.
Pace Gallery
DRIFT, iPhone 4s, 2018. Image courtesy of Pace Gallery.
So far, we’ve only covered digital art spaces that are reaping the benefits of our collective withdrawal from reality. On the other hand, one of Pace Gallery’s curated viewing rooms, Material Matters, offers a textual deep-dive into the significance that sculptural materiality holds for a variety of artists. To give credit where it’s due, the curators (Andria Hickey in collaboration with Joe Baptista and Danielle Forest) went above and beyond to incorporate related texts and artist quotes alongside the work. The accompanying text acts as a docent, providing viewers with accessible and educational insights to the featured works and the artists who created them. While this viewing room doesn’t offer multi-angle images of the included pieces, it does provide detail shots elevated by a slow zoom, bringing some much-needed movement to an otherwise flat plane.
Esther Schipper
Installation view of Fog Dog by Daniel Steegmann Mangrané. Image courtesy of Esther Schipper.
Esther Schipper gallery is digitally showcasing Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s second solo exhibition from March 12th to May 2nd 2020. Mangrané’s show, Fog Dog, appears to have actually been realized within the gallery space but has been adapted for online viewing due to the gallery’s temporary closure. Mangrané plays with light, architecture, and dimension to create experiential and unusual spaces that provoke one’s “tip-of-the-tongue” sense of familiarity while staying unrecognizable. These architectural interventions funnel the viewer into a semi-enclosed dark room where Mangrané’s first ever film is projected. The film, Fog Dog—available in the online viewing space—studies the day-to-day activities of the inhabitants of the Institute of Fine Arts of Dhaka, Bangladesh. The school happens to be the home of dozens of stray dogs as well, demonstating Mangrané’s interest in documenting all sorts of life in the school building. Naturally, being able to experience an exhibition like this in person would be preferable, but Ester Schipper does a remarkable job of virtually conveying the installation’s spatial dynamics and offers a wealth of information about the artist’s conceptual background, inspirations, and creation processes.
P.P.O.W. Gallery
P.P.O.W. gallery has confronted the COVID-19 pandemic head-on with a topical digital exhibition, Hell is a Place on Earth, Heaven is a Place in Your Head., featuring films by Carlos Motta, Carolee Schneemann, Guadalupe Maravilla, Hunter Reynolds, Suzanne Treister, and David Wojnarowicz. According to the press release, the exhibition addresses social and physical restrictions that affect human nature and behavior. The films of Motta, Wojnarowicz, and Reynolds pertain to the personal, political, and societal impacts of the AIDS crisis in America. It’s understandable that COVID-19 and AIDS have been conflated amid the patterns of bigotry, fear, and rapidly spreading misinformation, but it’s crucial to remember that almost no safety measures were put in place by the U.S. government to protect vulnerable communities from AIDS. This viewing space will be available until April 25th, 2020.
Still from Legacy by Carlos Motta, 2019, runtime 29 minutes 20 seconds. Image courtesy of P.P.O.W.