8:00-8:30 - VOMITDINGLBERRY MOVEMENT TROUPE AND ABRAVANATION 8.30-9:00 - ESCANDALO 9.30-11:00 - DJs JUSTIN MILLER (DFA) & JACQUES RENAULT (Runaway)
There will be a shuttle bus running between the gallery and the E and V subway stop at Ely and 23rd.
Absolutely Venomous Accurately Fallacious (Naturally Delicious), a sprawling exhibition by artistic force assume vivid astro focus, will open May 10 at Deitch Studios, Long Island City. Deitch Studios riverfront building will not only be teeming with sculpture and installation, but the gallery will be transformed into an avaf demolition disco will a full performance and event schedule.
Passing the colorfully muraled exterior of the building, guests enter from the riverside entrance beside a neon atom bomb explosion into the main installation. This large gallery space will be filled with collaborative sculpture, murals, and rugged found materials inspired by the construction sites found throughout the city and especially from Williamsburg into Long Island City. As traditional Brooklyn buildings are demolished to make way for glittering condo towers, so will this installation feature old architecture crashing down amidst black construction mesh, scaffolding, and shattered wood. avaf will contaminate this wreckage to pull new forms out of the destruction.
In this exhibition avaf creates a zone for reconstruction and rehabilitation, overseen by the goddess of change: the trannie. At the center of the main gallery lies an enormous back-bending, gender-bending figure split apart by a derelict Brooklyn house. The rear of the exhibition is a space for the repertoire of collaborative performances and video avaf has assembled to activate this explosive exhibition. Debuting here will be a new video in collaboration with Honeygun Labs. Amidst the music and video projections, the theme is the destruction in reconstruction through dance and devotion.
As in every avaf installation, the group has created a special zone for experience and interaction, not just an installation of objects. Circulating imagery from exhaustively researched corners of pop culture and art history, including contortionists, album covers, Helio Oiticica,, construction sites, vogue balls, Jayne County, graffiti, or You Tube amateur dance videos to name just a few, avaf compose hyperreal landscapes by their signature remixing of these components. In this way avaf visually explores their philosophy of viral contamination:
“The democratization of technology allows ideas and information to disseminate rapidly and reveal themselves in this infinite, accumulative, unfolding, looping process. There is a feeling of being devoured by this infinite swirl of information’s black hole. We are bombarded daily by an unprecedented about of information, but our capability to share has improved exponentially not only with respect to accessing knowledge but also as regards our perception, communication and expressive capabilities. This has given way to a new kind of human species, capable of absorbing and digesting loads of information at high speeds and existing in different dimensions and bodies, commuting easily between them. A new cross breed between a human and a virus is born.”
Obsession, curiosity, generosity and anxiety lie at the center of their process. This exhibition will be raw and exposed, where the collision of their disparate inspirations find visual expression in the upheaval and reconstitution of the installation design. Beautifully printed wallpapers and immaculate neon sculptures will clash with raw plywood and mangled cardboard. This free form use of materials reflects the group’s firm belief in the freedom to share/ spread/ absorb/ assume/ contaminate/ inseminate/ devour. In this spirit, the language they have created for this exhibition is:
arms viable and fast, abra vana alucinete fogo, andy vorhol andy forhol, another vulgar artist flailing, amazing vagina ass farts, altering vistas allowing freedom, always vivaciously altering fantasies, a very atomic firebomb, automatic vibrator at first, add velvet and froth, announcing vital answers finally, all vanity all finesse, abuse vanity antidote frustration, alienation vertigo action formula, another violet alien fetus, amorous vitality affirms fury, american virgin astonishing fecundity, analyzing voluminous amphibious follicles, another vivacious admiring friend, all volume any frequency, ambulance vigilant avalanche fascinant, a very anxious feeling, absorb viral attack fantasy, adore voluptuous actresses forever, ants visit antarctica finally, any vixen and follower, ariane veronique alice frederique, aspiring visual ascension freakout.
avaf is a morphing collaborative group of artists, designers, filmmakers, performers. avaf contaminates and is contaminated by their projects. They incorporate elements, actions, and the works of others into their own, while their collaborators do the same with avaf: a practice that borders on that of a curator, producer, or consultant. In this exhibition, avaf encompasses: Kenny Scharf, Desi Santiago, Michael Lazarus, Neon (Dudu Bertholini and Rita Comparato), Rick Castro, Fabio Gurjao, Rodrigo Garcia Dutra, Lau Neves, Melissa Stabile de Mello, Kleber Mattheus, Renata Abbade, Carla Machado, Escandalo, Color Wheel, Vava Dudu, Giles Round, Shoplifter, Bec Stupak and/or Honeygun Labs and Malcolm Stuart. Opening night will feature performances by Color Wheel, Escandalo, Abravanation Performance, and The Vomidinglberry Movement Troupe.
avaf has exhibited all over the world, most recently at the Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, Destroy Athens, Athens Biennial, 2007, and in the traveling exhibition Tropicalia curated by Carlos Basualdo. avaf will also be participating in the 28th Sao Paolo Biennial, In Living Contact, and creating a public art project in Rome with Francesco Bonami.
This is the first exhibition project at Deitch Studios, a spectacular 12,000 square foot space on the East River at the end of 44th Drive. Via Subway, take the E or V train to 23rd and Ely, then walk down 44th Drive to the river.
