aaajiao,"Limited Landscape, Unlimited Floating", 2017
unREAL examines the complexity of our digital age, it is an exhibition that attempts to confront the digital present through the very means of technological intervention both as critical examination as well as alternative prospects. The twenty-four works in the exhibition by international artists underscore the often-hidden materiality of bits and bytes, bringing to the fore the algorithmic processes that constitute our digital present.
aaajiao, "Limited Landscape Unlimited Floating", 2017
By revealing the mechanisms and means of digital processes in poetic installations and immersive projections, the works in the exhibition make apparent a new reality that situates itself in the materiality of media informed by data fluxes as the core of contemporary experience. In imagining new temporal-spatial modalities and through radical sensorial embodiment, the exhibition also manifests that the politics of the real no longer lies only in the sphere of the social but also alludes to who has the ownership of this new reality that is constructed by the materiality of bits and bytes and the algorithmic power of the digital.
aaajiao, "Obj 4", 2017
Participating Artists include:
aaajiao (Xu Wenkai), AES+F, LaTurbo Avedon, Ralf Baecker, Daniel Canogar, Cod.Act, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Kerstin Ergenzinger, Claudia Hart, Pe Lang, Rollin Leonard, Rosa Menkman, Lorna Mills, Harvey Moon, Carsten Nicolai, Eva Papamargariti, Zahra Poonawala, Sabrina Ratté, Fito Segrera, Rick Silva & Nicolas Sassoon, Phillip David Stearns, Daniel Temkin, Wang Yuyang
For more information, please see: http://www.hek.ch/en/program/events-en/event/testing-real-1.html
ABOUT THE ARTIST
AAAJIAO
Active online as a media artist, blogger, activist and programmer, aaajiao is the virtual persona of Shanghai-based artist Xu Wenkai. Born in 1984 in one of China’s oldest cities, Xi’an, aaajiao’s art and works are marked by a strong dystopian awareness—his year of birth being the synonym of George Orwell’s classic allegorical novel—, literati spirits and sophistication. Many of aaajiao’s works speak to new thinkings, controversies and phenomenon around the Internet, with specific projects focusing on the processing of data, the blogsphere and China’s Great Fire Wall. aaajiao’s recent projects extend his practice to various disciplines (among them architecture, electronic music, performance, product design, and medicine) to capture the pulse of the young generation consuming cyber technology and living in social media.
Aaajiao’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions around the world, upcoming and recent shows include: “Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today”, The Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Boston (2018); “Being Information”, SSSSTART, Shanghai, China (2017); “unREAL”, Haus der elektronischen Künste, Basel (2017); “Temporal Turn: Art and Speculation in Contemporary Asia”, Spencer Museum of Art, Kansas (2016); “Take Me (I’m Yours)” (curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jens Ho mann and Kelly Taxter), Jewish Museum, New York (2016); “Overpop”, Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2016); “Hack Space” (curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Amira Gad), K11 Art Foundation Pop-up Space, Hong Kong and chi K11 art museum, Shanghai (2016); “Globale: Global Control and Censorship”, ZKM | Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (2015); “Thingworld International Triennial of New Media Art”, The National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2014); and Transmediale, Berlin (2010). His solo exhibition includes: “Remnants of an Electronic Past”, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester (2016); OCAT Contemporary Art Terminal Xi’an, Xi’an (2016), among others. He was awarded the Art Sanya Awards in 2014 Jury Prize and was nominated for the first edition of OCAT-Pierre Huber Art Prize in 2014.
