Philip Pilekjær at Kim? Contemporary Art Centre

Philip Pilekjær

May 5 – June 11, 2023

Philip Pilekjær has created a new video piece for his exhibition at Kim? that mimics the popular YouTube genre known as Lofi. Typically, this genre incorporates pre-existing clips from animated films as visuals for lengthy playlists of mellow beats that are designed to function as ambient backdrops for activities such as reading or relaxing. 

However, for Kim? Pilekjær has commissioned the Ho Chi Minh City-based animation studio Nam Hai Art Design Company to produce an original animation, showing a scene of what could be the daily operations at this mid-sized arts institution, depicting the accumulation of ephemera–documents, snacks, pencils, and magazines–moving to and from the Chief Curator’s desk. This fictionalized animated scene is based on photographs taken in the office of Kim? earlier this year by Pilekjær, providing an opportunity to view the institution in a different way–literally as a cartoon.

As with other videos in this genre, this piece doesn’t really require a physical exhibition space for presentation. In fact, it may even be best viewed from the comfort of one’s own home. Consequently, it is presented both in the exhibition space as well as online.

The video is accompanied by Original Piece, a watercolor by illustrator Chris Weyant, who creates weekly comic strips for The New Yorker. Pilekjær commissioned the illustration to be printed on an invitation card for a previous exhibition, resulting in only its digital image being used and rendering the original artwork as an excess by-product.

Philip Pilekjær (b. 1988) is an artist and editor of PROVENCE Magazine. In recent years his work has been presented within exhibitions at Sangt Hipolyt (Berlin), XYZ collective (Tokyo), Christian Andersen (Copenhagen), The Downer (Berlin), Longtang (Zürich), Silberkuppe (Berlin) and Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen) among others.

Supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, State Culture Capital Foundation, Danish Arts Foundation, Absolut, Kokmuiza brewery

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“Rūgts” / Bitter

A Solo Exhibition by Krišs Salmanis

Curator: Zane Onckule

May 5 to June 11, 2023

Kim? Contemporary Art Centre

Conceptually clear, formally laconic, and precise in its content, Krišs Salmanis’ newest solo exhibition offers a critical review of the bygone powers present in one’s consciousness through work that is acutely aestheticized while avoiding nostalgic pitfalls. Challenging (pop) culture’s belated trend of flirting with post-Soviet aesthetics and narratives—a trend which often utilizes a kitschy, “so-bad-it’s-good” approach to artmaking—Salmanis’ exhibition foregrounds  an unenthusiastic irony toward the relics of the recent past, the physical and intellectual “ruins” of today. It’s an emotional narrative, full of perplexity and bitterness toward those who are willing, able, and prepared to read it.

This exhibition put itself together within a couple of hours after I set to work at 11 p.m. on December 31, 2022. By that time, I already had clear ideas for most of the works. It seems they had been piling up for some time. 

I have always considered myself a happy person. I am lucky to have been born in a place and time where I could comfortably have a good education, find like-minded people, and work and rest. I was exposed to Soviet life just enough to understand how lucky we had been to get out. I considered talk of the Soviet legacy to be that of old people merely complaining.

Staying in the countryside for a long time during the pandemic, I started noticing the white brick slums sagging in the fields, manor complexes, and crossroads. They helped me understand that my Soviet heritage is a developmental disorder in aesthetics. The slums seem to me such a normal part of the countryside I don’t even pay attention to them. This realization allowed me to understand the meaning of the plastic windows in Art Nouveau buildings as well as the plasterboard arches in block-house apartments, which I had hitherto thought of as an effect of poverty. Soviet heritage also means living in a world of symbols. Some people lay down flowers at monuments which others promptly destroy. When, at the end of a cruel and bloody year, some keep on celebrating on Moscow time while, an hour later, others shoot fireworks at the wounds of Ukrainian refugees, we have to admit that our guilt is deeper than aesthetics.

— Krišs Salmanis

Krišs Salmanis (b. 1977) lives and works in Riga, Latvia. He studied at the Art Academy of Latvia and the Media Art Academy of Cologne, Germany. Salmanis has had shows at Kim? Contemporary Art Centre in Riga, Latvia, CAC in Vilnius, Lithuania, Art in General in New York, USA,  A4 in Chengdu, China, and elsewhere. He has garnered a number of awards, the 13th Tallinn Print Triennial in 2004, 19. Videokunst Förderpreis, Bremen, Germany (2010), the Purvitis Award (2017) and the Latvian Theater Award (2019). Salmanis’ works are in the collections of the Latvian National Museum of Art and the Art Museum of Estonia. He has taken part in numerous international artist residencies, including HIAP in Helsinki, Finland (2012), KAIR in Kamiyama, Japan (2015) and ISCP in New York, USA (2022). He represented Latvia at the 55th Venice Biennale. Salmanis has had three solo exhibitions at Kim? and Rūgts is his return to the institution since the last exhibition in 2016.

Supported by the Culture Ministry, the State Culture Capital Foundation, Absolut.

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Online: RTRU Season 1 launch
Under The Hood
https://www.rtru.org

RTRU Season 1 contributors/participants: Dana Kopel (New York), Eltons Kūns (Riga), Rio Roye (New York), Līga Spunde (Riga), Candice Strongwater (New York), Alise Tifentale (New York/Riga), Viktor Timofeev (New York), and Jessica Wilson (New York).

Part research journal, part art and writing publisher, part hub for developments in emerging media, RTRU brings an interdisciplinary and technicity-centered approach to the status quo of contemporary art programming. Season one, Under The Hood, looks at the technical processes and economic and social structures of production that profoundly shape visual culture. Our first season considers the museum without images; the effusive “student body”; labor history; “the factory of phenomena,” the paradigmatic worksite of contemporary media culture; and much more.

In order to understand how imaging strategies produce the aesthetic effects that we frequently and unconsciously observe in the world, we must first understand the infrastructure for how these images are made, or go “under the hood.” The way visual culture comes to be constructed is at the center of these investigations: the real-time simulations and the skeletal rigs that form the underwire of thrashing corpses, the labor laws which structure capitalist workflows, the technologically dependent student body, the visible signature of video art tropes and their affective contours, many of which have become increasingly prevalent. All of these examples belie their beginning as metrics, inputs, algorithms, and other coding languages assigned by animators, programmers, and policymakers. The images produced by these original technical apparatuses thus introduce a new level of estrangement wherein the major referent is no longer the physical world, but the technical culture behind the curtain.