PARALLELISMS

Eli Cortiñas, Ingo Mittelstaedt, Sam Smith

PART 1 To Be Continued…

Exhibition curated by An Paenhuysen
13 – 28 March 2015

PART 2

Exhibition curated by insitu collective
(Marie Graftieaux, Nora Mayr, Lauren Reid)
10 April – 03 May 2015

For parallelisms, insitu collective presented two exhibitions that took place consecutively, both featured works by three artists: Eli Cortiñas, Ingo Mittelstaedt and Sam Smith.

With the desire to draw out different threads between the multi-layered practices of these artists, insitu invited an additional curator, An Paenhuysen, to see how shifts of curatorial perspectives can produce different exhibitions and ideas while working with the same trio of artists.

parallelisms: To Be Continued... (install detail) 2015. Text by An Paenhuysen. Photo: insitu 

PART 1 To Be Continued…

To Be Continued…, the first part of parallelisms, is an experiment in literary curating. It is inspired by the conversation that An Paenhuysen had with the insitu collective team via a blog format, where each curator consecutively posted an image that was a response to the preceding one. The chain reaction/cadavre exquis method of this blog turned into a body of visual research on the work of Eli Cortiñas, Ingo Mittelstaedt and Sam Smith.

Paenhuysen wrote a text based on this correspondence, which can be read as a loop. She then asked the artists to fill one blank page each by selecting a work that confirms, comments, opposes, ignores, hyper-affirms, or illustrates the text.

Ingo Mittelstaedt OXXXOXXXOXXOOOXOOXXOO (detail) 2012/2013. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Koal. Photo: insitu

PART 2

For the second part of parallelisms,  insitu collective explores a common thread between the artists that can be compared with a shift of focus: showing the back rather than the front, illuminating absence, or turning a negative space into a positive. Within their practices, the artists take a high interest in the apparatus and processes of their respective mediums of film and photography. They look at what is often left out of the frame and the potential for the lens to distort and manipulate its captured subjects. Thinking within the mindset of a camera, with a twist of their artistic lens they shift focus away from what would typically be the ‘subject’.