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Interview with Ubermorgen.com at DAM Gallery Berlin
February 6, 2011
Within the framework of Transmediale and DAS weekend in Berlin, DAM Gallery presents two projects by the artist duo Ubermorgen.com. The show features a temporary WOPPOW flagship store featuring fashion with bullet holes as trademarks and the Deephorizon project that presents oil paintings that are directly linked to the BP oil spill. On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition, VernissageTV met with ubermorgen.com’s lizvlx and Hans Bernhard who talk about exhibition and the two projects DEEPHORIZON and the WOPPOW flagship store. The exhibition runs until March 23, 2011.
Being Political Is Such A Huge Trend™ featuring Somali pirate-fashion project WOPPOW and real-life digital oil painting project DEEPHORIZON at Galerie DAM Berlin. Interview with Ubermorgen.com / Opening. Berlin / Germany, January 28, 2011.
> Right-click (Mac: ctrl-click) this link to download Quicktime video file.
Project description:
The temporary WOPPOW flagship store presents fashion in the age of predatory capitalism, global aggression and the indifference of the profiteers. With bright shining colours and bullet holes as his trademarks WOPPOW’s couture eradicates the pseudo-violence and superficial use of military style in contemporary fashion.The exhibition also features DEEPHORIZON, a time-critical project proclaiming the revival of painting. DEEPHORIZON consists of aerial images from the BP oil spill which the artists transformed from digital files into abstract images. Adapting the aesthetic tradition of oil painting, the pieces are printed on canvases.
Press release:
Gallery DAM Berlin is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of UBERMORGEN.COM in Berlin featuring two new time-critical projects of the artist couple. WOPPOW is a room installation based on video and art couture that is dealing with Somali pirates to highlight the exploitation in a globalized world and its backlashes. Fashion and lifestyle are hereby used as a metaphor. The artists will transform the gallery space into a flagship-store of the fictional fashion designer woppow. The project DEEPHORIZON is utilizing aerial images of the BP oil disaster spill in the Golf of Mexico proclaiming ironically the revival of ‘oil painting’ that could be experienced this time live via mass media as a form of process based art.
lizvlx (.at) and Hans Bernhard (.us/.ch) have been collaborating under the brand name UBERMORGEN.COM since 1999 and are widely recognized for the time-critical installations and as pioneers of digital actionism. In 2000, they became renowned for their project [V]ote-Auction – a platform for the trading of electoral votes in the presidential race between Bush and Gore.
Background story of WOPPOW: “The French fashion designer “woppow” travels to his homeland Kenya (Mombasa) and to Somalia (Puntland) to gather some inspiration for his next haute couture collection. Influenced by the media presence of Somali Pirates he starts to collect images of the country and its people, creates moodboards and decides to shoot clothes with guns in a highly creative way…” (Artist Statement)
WOPPOW is pushing the limits of couture with a new kind of aggressive high street wear. The latest flash in global boredom glamourizing the saturation of the decadent fashion world – highly political fashion mirroring the brutal reality of our world. Shot by real bullets.
For DEEPHORIZON, the artists have transformed these digital files into abstract images. Adapting the aesthetic tradition of oil painting, the pieces are printed on canvases. Artist Statement on DEEPHORIZON: “The supreme discipline of art – oil painting – is back with a vengeance – in the form of an oil painting on a 80.000 square miles ocean canvas with 32 million litres of oil – a unique piece of art… It has been 13 days since a BP oil and gas exploration well blew out, setting fire to the drilling rig, which sank, killing 11 people. Ever since, crude oil has been leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, raising the prospects of a historic environmental disaster. Winds from the south-east have nudged the slick northward… and has begun to paint the coastlines. Finally oil painting has evolved into generative bio-art, a dynamic process the world audience can watch live via mass media…”
Exhibitions (selection): LAboral Gijon, New Museum in New York, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, MOCA Taipei, MumoK Vienna, Ars Electronica, Konsthall Malmoe, NTT ICC Museum (Japan), ZKM (Germany), Lentos Kunstmuseum (Austria), Goethe-Institute Nairobi (Kenya), The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. They just finished a Net.Art commission CLICKISTAN for the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Entry filed under: art, Berlin, interview, VernissageTV | Comments Off
Tags: Hans Bernhard, lizvlx, Ubermorgen.com
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