Textile (Textile)

Like most of Laura Rokas’s hand-stitched works, Once in Two Moons was made while she sat in bed, imbuing the work with a tender sense of domestic intimacy. The scene’s dominant figure is a faceless woman whose blood red, dagger-like fingernails, polka dot jacket, and jet black hair resemble a sort of avatar of the artist. The figure surveys a chaotic scene that might be described as a “cute apocalypse” (a phrase Rokas says is characteristic of her work in general).

Painting (Painting)

Be Kind to Your Demons is a series of paintings by Hulda Guzmán that presents a variety of scenes in which female characters carry out ubiquitous activities in the company of secondary characters (mostly men) and devil-like creatures. Like much of her work, Be Kind to Your Demons is an invitation to embrace the devil in each of us, to surrender to bodily and external pleasures, and to engage in a conscious dialogue with our own existence. Guzmán’s paintings are a reminder of the brevity, potential intensity, and frailty of human existence.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Leticia Ramos’s film DROPSPIKE is the second of a five-part film project entitled STORIES OF THE END OF THE WORLD . Each film in the series takes place in a different part of the world where climate change modifies the landscape. The short 16mm film was mostly shot during Ramos’s residency at La Bacque in Switzerland.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In On Guard by Jeamin Cha, a security guard receives safety training, juxtaposed against his patrol of an empty building as he tries to give care instructions for his ailing mother over the phone. The film dismantles the binary oppositions between “caring” and “guarding,” two actions that parallel one another in their emphasis on attentiveness without a logical conclusion. Cha’s exploration of the relationship between these two focuses is channeled through nocturnal urban space, drawing attention to the labor that each requires.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In Excerpts from the Analects of Confucius , Peng Hung-Chih explores the relationship between Confucianism and religion. Specifically, the piece questions the influence of Confucian teachings on the role of the intellectual in contemporary Chinese society. While Confucianism has its own ritual systems and temples, it is not known to be overly concerned with supernatural beings such as gods and demons.

Installation (Installation)

Masterpiece in the Water by Lu Pingyuan tells the story of an impatient collector who is killed by an artist. This murder becomes an artwork in of itself as the story within the story sheds light on the psychological anxieties faced by soldiers during war time, the family bond, and the paranormal. This playful, yet violent, story explores the amusing similarity between supernatural events and the creation of artistic ideas, while reflecting on the complex relationships that exist within the art world.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Ben Shaffer’s Ben Deroy (2007) is part performance, part self-portrait, and part spiritual vision. Often the artist works with the motifs of the counterculture and contemporary non-religious spiritualism. The figure hangs suspended—seemingly ascending—animation.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

HOWE

Photography (Photography)

Physical and mental exploration have been founding elements in Joachim Koester’s research for several years. While exploration was mainly a matter of geography during the 19th century, the 20th century brought the mental exploration of our unconscious, triggered by the discovery of psychoanalysis. Koester is interested in documenting minor events, forgotten by History, in order to reintroduce them into collective memory.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Hako (2006) depicts a mysterious and dystopic landscape where the world becomes flat: distance between different spaces, depth of field and three-dimensional perceptions are canceled. Interiors of a Victorian doll’s house, a rippled seascape, a palm tree forest, and a gravel seashore are superimposed, morphing into each other. The hermetic narrative is charged with psychological and mythological aspects.