Cirrus Cloud Room 6

Cirrus: wispy clouds at high altitudes, which take on the colors of sunset and sunrise.

Zsolt Asztalos
Jeanette Doyle
Tommie Soro

This room combines artists who are looking at other artists, placing themselves in history in reference to and in continuation of research done by others. Zsolt Asztalos emphasizes an act of choice, re-examining what it is to form a canon, how it changes, who can make one. He asserts that we can make our own canon, each artist as an individual. His installations are shown here in situ (Unknown Artists) and also as a photograph of an installation (The Canon), a frame within a frame. We see the life of the art works, the true life of being stacked, stored, invisible a majority of the time; these bodies of art, become relics packaged and recorded, or unrecorded and rediscovered in thrift shops. He reminds us that this is the fate of so many art works and brings to question how we should preserve the efforts of the active mind of the artist. The Canon, becomes a series of desktop works, using images of El Greco, Michael Borremans, etc., we begin to see how the reproductions of art become like the Spanish or Dutch still-life paintings, assemblages, things stacked and folded. Art becomes an everyday occurrance something in our backgrounds, but still vital and compelling even when folded, stacked, or half uncovered. Jeanette Doyle's 7 Days stems from a work she made in the past entitled '7 days in the Art World'. She describes this past work,"It was premised on the relationship between dematerialized or conceptual practices and digital or immaterial practices. The starting point was a series of postcards which On Kawara distributed in the 1960's printed with the time which he had arisen each day entitled 'I GOT UP'." Her work builds on the work of On Kawara and beckons to look more closely at our daily messages, our existence and our relationship to art that has come before us. The material and immaterial balance in the passing of each day and the materiality of the paper work, the drawing on the paper and the reference to connecting with Lucy Lippard. The making of the work becomes a lifeline in the material world, a way to exist, to know each day has happened and a creation of the evidence of it. Tommie Soro's Cyborg Picnic references the Garden of Earthly Delights a triptych by Hieronymous Bosch. Soro explains the work, "A Cyborg Picnic appropriates the form and symbolism-based methodology of this triptych, harnessing its story-telling power to tell a story about subjects who are tired of stories, a story about a world that has no natural order, a story about finding hope in imperfect futures." Indeed this work rejoices in the future of the cyborg, his idea that cyborgs may some day be relaxing with a beer at a picnic while the world as we know it is brought to its own demise through the unjust systems that we have created; seemingly cynical, this work acts as a parable in its warning, bringing hope that we might learn from its prediction before it is too late. You can see the development of this ongoing series in Soro's virtual studio.

Zsolt Asztalos, Unknown Artists, Installation view, 2014–2019

Zsolt Asztalos, The Canon – Michael Borremans, Photograph, C print, 70x100 cm 2020

Zsolt Asztalos, The Canon – El Greco I.,Photograph, C print, 70x100 cm, 2020

Zsolt Asztalos, The Canon – El Greco II.,Photograph, C print, 70x100 cm, 2020

Jeanette Doyle, 7 Days, Digital Print on Office Paper with Marker, 297mm x 210mm, 2018.

Tommie Soro, A Cyborg Picnic, Triptych, 2020-21

Tommie Soro, A Cyborg Picnic, Sketch for Panel 2

Tommie Soro, A Cyborg Picnic, Panel 1: Origins

Tommie Soro, A Cyborg Picnic, Panel 3