Artists: Barriobajero, Ferèstec, Marian Garrido, Emilio Gomariz, Taisuke Koyama, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Seth Price.
Curator: Cristina Anglada
Dates: April 11th to May 23rd, 2015

Nicely Offensive / english version

Nicely Offensive is the title of an exhibition project conceived for the 5th edition of a3bandas. It is curated by Cristina Anglada for PONCE + ROBLES gallery. The participant artists of this group show are: Barriobajero, Ferèstec, Marian Garrido, Emilio Gomariz, Taisuke Koyama, Jaakko Pallasvuo and Seth Price. From theory to the most diverse formulations, all of the works in Nicely Offensive constitute a descriptive reflection on what has come to be called “Post-Internet” over the last decade. Elusive and polemical, successful and frustrating in equal measure, this label has brought visibility to many of the artistic practices towards which net-art has shifted in the current context of commodification. Just a few years after having emerged and developed exponentially in a bubble, this avant-garde trend or movement has recently been the subject of a historical revision.
The authors whose practices have been named with the term -post-Internet- are responsible for the process towards a possible and happy co-existence between art, life and Internet equation. The consequences of this development do not only affect the very own nature of this kind of creation (objectification), but rather creates interesting challenges to the art’s own system. The social reception and presence are an essential part in the conformation of these works.

The term post-Internet was coined by Marisa Olson and developed subsequently by writer Gene McHugh in the review blog “Post Internet” in 2009 and analyzed later by a large number of theorists and artists (Artie Vierkant). There is an attempt to define it as a result of the contemporary moment determined by omnipresent authorship, attention as currency, physical space collapse in the net culture and digital materials reproducible and mutable nature ad infinitum. Furthermore, this kind of works supposes an innovative investigation of the community that has altered our notion of public space, primarily regarding the changes Internet has generated in our perception and transmission of information.

The term serves both to differentiate from two artistic trends in recent history with which it usually is associated: conceptual and new media. Post-Internet art goes beyond concerning only about specific use of the new technologies (new media), and achieves a sincere examination of current cultural changes, in which, of course, technology plays an important role, although not significant. From conceptualism inherits the tendency towards dematerialization on behalf of idea, concept and word. They come from what has been called “digital art”, a term that at the same time comprehend subcategories as the new media, computer art or net art, Those are practices that have being cultured by pioneers from Lillian F. Schwartz to new generations

These kinds of manifestations, as part of Art History discussions, seem to go one step beyond the journey photography started in the beginning of the 20th century. We are here referring to the consequences of the final conflict between the work’s constellations and its recording and make this distance disappear which would still be isolating artistic from the rest of the general audio-visual system. These works are exactly in its distribution platform, in our computer screens, since the very first moment that we are able to see them. They own an inner transient nature, like all of the works belonging to the technical image universe. Image has been given as a time-image, a motion-image. The sign is experienced like ephemeral and changeable, contingent and evolving, as an event itself and not like a pure representation. One more essential feature is its absolute offshore in sourcing nothing of what happens here takes its own physical place existing in multiple times and places. Currently everything seems to indicate that the rejection – control that Art Institution adopted towards these proposals has been overcome. All this is clearly related to the emergence of a new public accustomed to this language and starring a generational change, in addition to the nature of the works, now as mutations and in many cases materialized digital works (objectification & saleable) falling clearly into harmony with market rules. Through these proposals we would come to inquire about the term and the specific practices that are inserted under the same.