Category: Exhibition

#Portal consists of sculptural and pictorial elements comprising two large, gilded polyethylene sheets draped over a frame-like structure. The sculptural element is the golden frames, which are reminiscent of archways, while the pictorial component consists of gilded polyethylene sheets. These semi-transparent, diaphanous paintings hang like veils over the gates.

Both the sculptural and pictorial elements blend forms and imagery from religious icons, selfie-filters and smartphones. The design of the frames echoes the bezel of an iPhone as well as the archways that frame depictions of miracles in a Russian Orthodox icon. In the gilded paintings hand gestures, haloes and decorative features mix with augmented reality adornments from selfie filters. 

By combining sacred and profane images #Portal alludes to the promises of proximity offered religious icons and handheld, networked devices: Proximity to the divine and proximity to people, places and events geographically and/or temporally absent. The forms and features appropriated from icons, smartphones and social media orbit around intangible bodies which are conveyed to us as painted respectively digital faces – mirages, representations, recognizable but not real.

DARV_Steps Untold is a series of Mixed Reality performative interventions that take place on steps and stairways in the public space of Linz. It addresses the social pressure for constant (self-)optimization, the continuous (re-)positioning and integration in new contexts.

The DARV team created a conceptual and media framework in which choreographers, sound artists, and non-professional performers with different cultural and social backgrounds were invited to work together.

They present two site-specific performative interventions accompanied by soundscapes, involving real and digital performers. Different levels of reality are intertwined through the use of AR technology. Both projects, Treasures and (Not) Here (Not) There, expose the personal, intimate realities of the participants by revealing their way of living and working, their perspectives on language and culture, the awareness of their own diversity.