Artists Hijack MoMA with AR Art Exhibition

Official Release from MoMAR

NEW YORK, October 25, 2019— 

From October 25, MoMAR returns to MOMA with a smartphone based group show, using Augmented Reality technology. Launched in spring 2018, the non-profit gallery project hijacks the Estée and Joseph Lauder Gallery (former Jackson Pollock Rooms) for the third time. While art seems to be the ultimate place of freedom and individuation, art museums often resemble sacred devotional spaces in which perspectives and behavior know only one direction. MoMAR ties in with the artistic movement of 'Play Art’, which in the 1960s had a democratization of art in mind. Variable art objects made art itself tangible as a product of collective activities and value creation processes. The participants of 'Open to the Public' belong to the generation of the Internet. However, they have also started to dynamize the medium of art, its exhibition forms and ways of interpretation. MoMAR provides a platform for these approaches and therefore rethinks the mechanisms of art curation. Each artist has created new work specifically for the exhibition. Thus 'Open to the Public' takes MoMA's new exhibition concept at its word and provides for 'more than physical expansion'. It is less about the ownership or location of individual works of art than about the plurality and diversity of their experience. The VR-collage “La Barrera” by New York based artist Erin Ko is an augmented reality piece that addresses the signal-to-noise ratio in our everyday lives, at a time when the future seems especially uncertain. Her work plays with the idea that museumgoers are looking at art while the world is burning, melting, and falling apart. But is it simply a luxury, willful distraction, or a genuine appreciation for the present moment? The spatial work “Reef” by German artist Manuel Rosner creates an evolutionary spatial structure that is built by its own dynamics. In contrast to the white cube's neutral architecture it is a colorful mix-up which doesn't derive its aesthetics from expressive forms of art, but from software which uses color-coding for transmitting information. The work “Strokes” by the Japanese artist duo “exonemo” also questions the exhibition space in an abstract way. Each time the piece starts, your phone drips random strokes on the wall and beyond. This ephemeral painting only exists in a world-famous museum, made-up in your mind. Finally, the work “Augmented Selfie” addresses the partly libertarian, partly narcissistic trait of virtual self-representation. An avatar of Akihiko Taniguchi appears in augmented reality and a hand holding an iPhone appears in the first person view in the screen. Tap the screen to take a picture in the AR space and the picture is saved to your smartphone automatically. Akihiko's Avatar will mimic your player’s movements. The artist says: “This is an extended selfie where various things intersect in virtual space and real space, where they meet and gather.” After all, art takes place in the conversations of the exhibition visitors. Let me open Instagram. 

About the artists: 

The Japanese artist duo exonemo (by SEMBO Kensuke and AKAIWA Yae) was formed in 1996 on the Internet. Their experimental projects are typically humorous and innovative explorations of the paradoxes of digital and analog – computer networked or actual – environments in our lives. Their piece “The Road Movie” won the Golden Nica for Net Vision category at Prix Ars Electronica 2006. Exonemo have been organizing the IDPW gatherings and "Internet Yami-Ichi" since 2012. They live and work in New York since 2015. 

Erin Ko is a mixed media artist based in New York. Ko’s experiential art plays with Mediated Reality, Collective Consciousness and Layered Experiences. She combines traditional art making methods with new media tools to address our complicated love/hate relationship with technology. She has worked in video games and new media for 20 years. Some of those endeavors include time spent at Looking Glass Studios, Razorfish, and Blue Fang Games. 

Manuel Rossner creates spaces that merge playfulness, sobriety and abstract aesthetics. Often, but not necessarily, they intersect with reality. His work has been shown in international institutions and galleries. After founding Float Gallery in 2012, he designed a digital extension building for NRW-Forum Düsseldorf and a virtual building for Roehrs & Boetsch Gallery in Zürich. His solo exhibition for the Museum der bildendenden Künste Leipzig opens in autumn 2019. He lives and works in Berlin. 

https://okikata.org/ lives and works in Japan. His work includes installations, performances and video works using self-built devices as well as software. In recent years, he has focused on net art work – and sometimes VJing. Tanoguchi teaches at Tama Art University and Musashino Art University. Main exhibitions include "dangling media" ("emergencies! 004" at "Open Space 2007," ICC, Tokyo, 2007), "Space of Imperception" (Radiator Festival, UK, 2009), "redundant web" (Internet, 2010) "[Internet Art Future?]" (ICC, Tokyo, 2012). 

The gallery 

MoMAR is an unauthorized gallery concept aimed at democratizing physical exhibition spaces, museums, and the curation of art within them. MoMAR is non-profit, non-owned, and exists in the absence of any privatized structures. MoMAR uses Augmented Reality to overlay art onto existing artwork and frames housed in museums and gallery spaces around the world. Downloading the MoMAR app, visitors hold their phones over specified frames and spaces in order to view alternate artwork, and MoMAR exhibits. 

Download the MoMAR app at http://momar.gallery Alternatively, iOS 11 users, simply point your camera at the code for instant download. You cannot view the exhibit without the app. Unless you have psychic powers. LOL 

Press Contacts: press@momar.gallery For downloadable high-resolution images, register at http://momar.gallery

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