Pseudo-Synesthesia

So turns out finding yourself plagued all day by a song stuck in your head that you haven't heard in a while may actually be from something we saw. 

"According to a study headed by scientist Stephen Palmer, we are hardwired to associate anything from Mozart to Mumford & Sons with a particular hue from the color spectrum. Whether it's a classical composition or an indie pop ballad, we automatically make music-color connections based on how the various melodies make us feel [...] insinuating that humans might share a "common emotional palette" that can cross cultural barriers." (read the full article here)

Ohhh, art. 

Wonder what this one sounds like?

Philip Mueller

Carpet Compendium

Halloween is coming, time to get weird.

Anahita Razmi - Psyco Slut carpet subversion

Antonio Santin - Trompe l'oeil painting

Beastie Boys Get My Fancy Tape

So from deep in the nether regions of our storage, this was found:

Michael Sailstorfer Tape

So... making bank? Get tape. 

Money makin money money makin

Kafka Ate My Lobster

Rui Chafes makes anthropomorphic forms, half familiar, half confusing, in contoured heavy steel, simultaneously gentle and menacing, an ominousness that lingers on the edge of manifesting. 

“Art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. Thus the [artist] is the truth, and yet when he speakes he lies.” ― Franz Kafka

So the lobster is not a lobster, because eyes remain trapped between half awake and half asleep. Kafka lives in the mind and comes out through the hands, disorienting, surreal and nightmare-ish. What has happened, you might think. It is no dream.

All we do is see. 

So come see Rui.

Rui Chafes

Coming to CARBON 12 DUBAI this January

Stomping Ground

You wanna give attitude???

Well SO. CAN. WE.

Philip Mueller, the real face of anger

TV TV TV

“Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye” (Bill Hicks) But who doesn't like a little "its so bad... it's good"?

Totally absorbed by Anahita Razmi at MOVING IMAGE London

Whether you think TV is brain rot, imagination inducing, or eye opening... Anahita Razmi likes it. Right now at Moving Image Fair London, she has a video installation of popular Austrian TV presenters reciting Lucio Fontana's 1952 manifesto... about TV, of course. 

An excerpt from Fontana's Television Manifesto of the Spatial Movement:

"...the still unknown spaces of the cosmos - spaces to which we address ourselves as data of intuition and mystery, the typical data of art as divination. For us, television is a means that we have been waiting for to give completeness to our concepts."

Anahita Razmi - Replays/Replace video still - 2013
His face says it all, don't you think?

And just for kicks Korean installation artist Nam June Paik (1932-2006). 

TV. So versatile. 

Nam June Paik - TV Cello - 1971

Nam June Paik - TV Garden - 1974

Who's a naughty boy?

Rocket Tree 2008 - self explanatory

Michael Sailstorfer (b. 1979, Germany), that's who. 

(the kind of artist that might make environmentalists angry and disaster fetishists feel loved)

Shooting Star 2002 - Homemade mercedes catapault for light posts

MICHAEL SAILSTORFER @ Carbon 12 Dubai - Nov 18 - Jan 7 - "Try to reach the goal without touching the walls"

Come see what he's done now

Shout-out of a shout-out

We are in London with Anahita Razmi (resident pop-culture appropriating artist). See what ARTINFO had to say about us at Moving Image Fair (if you can't bear the wait, it says we are a highlight of the fair).

Macho Men

As Vienna Fair comes to an end, we will have to deal with the inevitable take-down of the booth. A little peek into what visitors never get to see... our artists Philip Mueller and Bernhard Buhmann hard at work a few days ago, putting on a whole different kind of show:

Just part of the process. We do it, so that you can do this:

Last day! VIENNA FAIR! 

Catch us next in London at Moving Image Oct 17-20. 

Happy Faced

So, art really does make you happy: "scientists have discovered that looking at art induces the same feelings of pleasure as being in love."

Just look at that face:

Proof is in the pudding - visitor at our booth at Vienna Fair

Follow the signs...

We are currently at Vienna Fair (Oct 10-13).

Serious business, this art-fair stuff is.

Visitors checking out Anahita Razmi, our cheeky Iranian-German artist

Don't worry about not being able to find us.
Just follow the signs.

Prime location

It's the weekend!

As the work week draws to a close, time to unleash that alter-ego and get to that weekend fun-time. Speaking of alter-egos, which goes along the lines of casual appropriation of something we like, dislike, or just want to try... Anahita Razmi (b. 1981) is an artist who takes pop culture and puts her own spin on it. Whether an hommage to Yoko Ono's "Cut Piece"(1965) or relinquishing her inner bad-girl via Tracey Emin... the German-Iranian artist does it tongue-in-cheek. Predominantly using the medium of video, there is a grounded-ness and accessibility to her works that maybe...some other video artists might be missing?

But in a technology-screen age, sitting down for a little visual stimulation should be no extra hassle, and Razmi is definitely worth finding and sitting through.

Lucky we can find her video works a few places right now:

VIENNA! (Vienna Fair, Oct 10-13)
LONDON! (Moving Image Fair, Oct 17-20)
VENICE! (Venice Biennale, until Nov 24)
VANCOUVER! (Access Gallery, until Oct 26)

And since it is the weekend, let's keep with the theme...

Anahita Razmi - Walking drunk in in high shoes (2010)
http://www.anahitarazmi.de/drunk.php

Dream-states as Real-states

James Clar works with light. We can say he comes from Dan Flavin or Olafur Eliasson, but that is beside the point. Today, it is all about what we see when there is no light... at night (or day, if you prefer) when we dream. 

James Clar One Minute Dreamstate (1.40am) 2012

This particular work involved a brainwave sensor which recorded Clar's brain activity while asleep. At 1.40am, REM occurred and he entered a dreamstate. One minute of this recording was then mapped out and translated into light filters, arranged in a circle to emulate the face of a clock (or an iris?). Merging technology, science, art, and mundanity (fluorescent lights)... Clar made his dreams literally real and happening in front of him once he was awake.  

This is not a new concept though. In the last couple years scientists (in Japan and the US) have been making major strides in doing exactly what James was doing, but taking it a step further. Not only are they taking our dreams and making them physical, they are replaying them for us. 




Above is a video of the visual reconstruction of activity in the human brain. It is blurry, a little fragmented, but definitely recognizable. This is an art post after-all, think of the pixels as a colour palette. Or Pointillism. 

They did this by showing test subjects a series of movie trailers while an fMRI system (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging System) recorded the blood flow in the brain to the visual cortex. The readings were fed into a computer, divided into pixel units (voxels) and put back together to make images that are pretty uncanny. As the experiments continued, the technology utilized was able to better  read, and thus connect, specific brain information to their corresponding motions/colours/etc. 

That is all very technical though, thank god for Google; still beside the point though.

So! A chance to rewatch/relive what the deepest-nether-regions of our brains come up with when we aren't paying attention!? Who's in?



One Minute Dreamstate (1.40) was exhibited at Carbon 12 in 2012 as part of James Clar's solo exhibition Iris was a Pupil. 

Fast Forward

WORK IT OUT - RJD2

Bill Shannon, the man flitting around effortlessly in this video, was born with a degenerative hip disease where his lower limbs physically cannot support his body weight; he has spent his entire life on crutches. "No legs"? No problem. The way he uses motion is a personalized, stylized, completely Bill-Shannon way of moving.

Not sure which is more aggravating, that feeling of "going nowhere fast" or this man who completely (and humbling-ly) obliterates us with facile movement for whining about that in the first place.

So... why is this relevant? 

Our November exhibition: something to do with going nowhere fast.

Countdown: VIENNA FAIR

Carbon 12 is going to be at Vienna Fair this year. 10 - 13 October 2013. Will you? 

Where to find us: Booth E6

This will be an exhibition of art for art. The variety in medium encourages remembrance that whichever format it begins, it always ends with the visual. 

Bernhard Buhmann: Dreamy, colourful, dense paintings celebrating the surrealist inner world, Gulliver-and-Lilliputian style. 

Ghazel: Mixed media paper and ink works, maps, black and a sensation of suffocation discussing the contemporary problematic of displaced identity. 

Sara Rahbar: Assemblage and sculptures with carefully collected "found" war-souvenirs, discarded objects and self-cast bronze limbs; all kinds of heavy. 

Anahita Razmi: Pop-culture appropriation dealing with identity and gender in humorous video and performance mediums; one watch isn't enough. 

Artist talks included.


Want to see the works?

Vienna Fair. 

The Ghazelian-Method

Ghazel (b. 1966, Iran) is at the top of her performance art game even though she has been dealing with the theme of "displacement" since the mid-90s; it takes a lot of skill to make a 20 years tried-and-true topic continuously interesting and relevant. How? Well... that's Ghazel's secret know-how but I think it probably has something to do with her sense of humor. 

Family Tree is the latest extension of Ghazel's seminal Me series and arguably her most personal of a very personal exploration into her own history as a displaced being (Iran, France). She relives her childhood with anecdotes in her child-self voice, printed simply on photographs or in short videos and accompanies the text with emulations of the characters she speaks of, in a black and white, anti-formalist, almost slap-stick style. For example, her dog:

Ghazel Episode 10 Dino from Family Tree series, 2013

Did I mention every character wears a chador? Curious why? Read the exhibition text on Family Tree for a deeper look into why she does what she does.  

Ghazel Ghazel Ghazel