Until January 5th, the Gazelli Art House presents Nature of Non-Existence, a new solo exhibition by Recycle Group, the award winning artist duo known for their pioneering use of technologies from Virtual Reality (VR) to Augmented Reality (AR) throughout their practise.
Recycle Group is comprised of Andrey Blokhin (B. 1987, Krasnodar, Russia) & Georgy Kuznetsov (B. 1985, Stavropol, Russia) in 2006 and aim to explore the realm of Virtual Reality (VR) using both recycled imagery and materials. Their work aims to bridge incompatible subjects such as the classical with the contemporary, Western artistic traditions with Russian domestic realities. Since 2008 the artists have regularly participated in various group shows in Moscow, St Petersburg and other Russian cities. The year 2008 marked their first exhibition under the title Recycle Group. Two years later, the artist won the prestigious Kandinsky Prize in the Young Artist category for their Reverse project. Works by Recycle Group are part of the public collections of Glasstress, Royal Museum of Scotland, Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow among others. Both Andrey Blokhin and Georgy Kuznetsov live and work between the South of France and Krasnodar.
In their new exhibition, the artists unlock a hidden world via the use of an AR app available on the viewer’s mobile devices. In the words of Recycle Group, “The main idea behind Nature of Non-Existenceis that the visitor can change their perspective to a machine’s eyes and feel how the world is inside the brains of a machine. There are two points of view in the world: a human’s and a machine’s, a perspective that we do not see and doesn’t exist for us. The experience gives the viewer a chance to feel like a machine; not just to see it, but to feel it.”
Recycle Group examines how technology changes society and the looming notion of singularity in these new works. Ray Kurzweil, who coined the term technological singularity, defines it as the time when humans and machines will merge together with AI to reach super-human levels of intelligence. The artists explore on-going questions such as can machines have their own feelings, will they learn to take control of our world and what will happen to the relationship between humans and machines in the future. As the viewer walks around the exhibition and hovers the Recycle app over the sculptures, the experience unfolds. Without the use of the app, some parts of the exhibition remain restricted from view and these visual limits are confronted by the artists to highlight society’s growing reliance on machines “This timely exhibition provides the viewer with real and augmented visions to behold. Responding to the growing use of big data and artificial intelligence, the artists present new works to question the role of machines and their perspective of our world,” said Mila Askarova, Founding Director of Gazelli Art House.
More information: here
Copyrights: Recycle-Group-Nature-of-Non-Existence-image-courtesy-of-Gazelli-Art-House
