How it went: One Night Between Heaven and Hell

On the 18th of May TAEX joined the busy lineup of Frieze NYC side events with a private show and a cocktail reception, packed with our curators, artists, and their works.

 

Assembled by our Senior Curator Dr Margarita Kuleva, the show had just about every method of digital reproduction: old-school TVs, projections, screens and even an accidental 3 metre tall image reflection onto the opposite building (courtesy of the narrow streets of New York). As you can guess — the show focused on the coexistence of digital and physical realms, and the way they manifest within the digital canvas of a big city such as New York — heavenly for some (like our guests) and infernal for the others (like the Gallery’s electricity bill). Jokes aside, this one night only event showcased the fruits of TAEX critical practice and inquiry into crypto art via the works of our artists and the visions of our curators — dreams and nightmares as they come. 

 

Artworks of the Metaverse Dérive: NFT Cities drop by Oğuz Emre Bal, Othmane Kandri, and Jessica Baldivieso. Available to purchase.

Artworks by Joshua Goode. Available to purchase.

The exhibition featured a curated selection of artists and architects who engage with symbiotic landscapes, raw materials of architectural dreams, and mix the indigenous and the contemporary, standing at the forefront of speculative and digital architecture — Oğuz Emre Bal, Othmane Kandri (Zaha Hadid Architects), and Jessica Baldivieso. Furthermore, we dived into a critical view of crypto currencies as institutions through the eyes of the artist Riitta Hakkarainen; as well as the works of Lyndsey Walsh and Dr Natalia Fedorova with their eccentric bio art creatures. The digital gothic was also reflected in the practice of Joshua Goode, who ingeniously fuses popular culture with the aesthetics of the ancient world, and, notably, was the only artist to mould his dreams (or nightmares) in bronze. 

 

Artwork by Lyndsey Walsh

To culminate the event, a renowned media theorist Dr Lev Manovich introduced his latest project with TAEX, which creates connections between his investigations into modernism with his work on Hieronymus Bosch’s divine nature of architecture.

 

Artworks by Dr Lev Manovich and Joshua Goode. Available to purchase.

 

We would like to thank our wonderful guests for their dedication to TAEX in the face of so many Frieze events, our curator Dr. Margarita Kuleva, our talented artists, and The Untitled Space for making this event possible.

 

 

The latest issue of The Art Newspaper International with the fragment of artwork by Dr Lev Manovich on a TAEX sleeve. Artwork available to purchase.

 

You may download the full event image archive here. Please note, that any reproduction of the photographs must be credited.