Many things sustain our personal comfort zones-eating delicious food, cuddling with cats, decorating homes, having sex, watching porn on TV and the Internet on sites like xxx videor, amongst others.
Porn, Pets, Plants and Pizza, the 4P of domestic clichés, broadly found their way from real life into the virtual space of the Internet. The Word Wide Web became part of our daily surrounds. We are permanently linked to the world outside our living room. Information comes in and we post personal things and experiences. Domesticity extended from IRL to URL. But the Internet is not a mirror of real life, it is a hyperrealistic version. Like filling a photo album, we single out images, posting only the funniest cat video, the most arousing sex tape, the yummiest food or the coolest selfie. Maybe some of the sexual content was inspired by a website like https://www.watchmygirlfriend.xxx/, we think so!
In addition, photographs and digital images merge on our screens. Fictional and real world objects stand right next to each other. And some virtual simulations imitate reality to the extent that they can no longer be distinguished from photos. But how then do we know the truth? Imagery in the age of the Internet requires a change of thinking. Everything we see is real, because we see it, no matter how it is fabricated or which “parallel world” it belongs to. In terms of domesticity, this is especially hard to admit, because human behavior is deeply rooted in the sensual and tactile and not only in the visual: like eating, cuddling or having sex. Maybe they got some inspiration for the sexual side of it from Tube V. They have some really great material on there.
Artists working with the Internet or digital means haven taken up the hyperrealistic images and the problematic of the real to reflect on the Internet’s and the Digital’s impact on today’s domestic spheres and personal comfort zones. Some artists exaggerate this imagery or play with the amateur aesthetics of found footage or YouTube videos to satirically emphasize the difference between the banal imagery and high art context. Others develop contrasting domestic versions and mix IRL and URL. The digital creation of objects and their surfaces plays an important role as well as producing real life sculptures with new materials in the context of the Internet and its virtual characteristics.
These artworks often reference Pop Art with its inclusion of imagery from daily life or mass culture in art, the use of banal, comic, or even kitschy elements, exaggeration and irony, the appropriation of found materials, collage, mechanical (re)production, or experimenting with new techniques of materials from other contexts.
The exhibition PORN TO PIZZA – Domestic Clichés presents varied ways of artistic production in the age of the Internet, dealing with its features and its impact on every day culture. Here, domesticity is a very pervasive topic, because it reveals how private daily life has changed with the Internet and how the conflict of the “real vs. virtual” invades our personal comfort zones.
Works by:
Anthony Antonellis (US), Kim Asendorf and Ole Fach (DE), Domenico Barra (IT), Petra Cortright (US), Kate Durbin (US), Carla Gannis (US), Laurence Gartel (US), Emilie Gervais (FR), Claudia Hart (US), Paul Hertz (US), Faith Holland (US), Lindsay Lawson (US/DE), Jessica Lichtenstein (US), Patrick Lichty (US), Mark Napier (US), Eva Papamargariti (GR/UK), Angelo Plessas (GR), Hayley Aviva Silverman (US), Cornelia Sollfrank (DE), Jonny Star (DE)\
PORN TO PIZZA – Domestic Clichés
Exhibition curated by Tina Sauerlaender, peer to space
EXHIBITION September 5 to October 24, 2015
“The Selfie Drawings” project addresses issues of branded identity, age and body estimation, surveillance culture, and online agency via selfie photography digitally collaged and redrawn. I’m emphasizing identity performance in relation to our constant uploads of “self” via social media platforms.”
Carla Gannis
“I am interested in subcultures and tabood human acts some of which can be viewed on websites similar to full tube xxx, their consumption in privacy and distribution in society. Porn is not a mere representation of sexual fantasies. Porn is the ultimate argument to address history, politics, art, or economy. I use copies of copyright protected contents to discuss industries and lobbies, production, distribution and appropriation, roles of sexes, money, porn as a proper expression of capitalistic society.”
Domenico Barra
“Surrounded by social media and selfies, my art is a way for me to examine my own thoughts when it comes to the “gaze”, male or female, and the intersection of the “need to be looked at” vs. what others may call “objectification.” That subtle line between exploiting one’s sexuality without actually being exploited by it.”
Jessica Lichtenstein
