Daniela Wolfer and Pepo Salazar

Upstream Gallery will present a new exhibition with paintings by Daniela Wolfer and in the basement video by Pepo Salazar.

Daniela Wolfer (Germany, 1972)

Artist statement: TANZ

Music from the speakers is talking to the crowd.
Big pimpin, string tangas blinking, answering bodies.
The crowd is screaming to me. As a DJ we feel each other.
As a painter I see you as a genre.
Your dancing, your habits, gestures and attitudes.

By painting you, transformed into a classic image,
I freeze you like a painted snapshot of this underworld.
Asking if there is a personality hiding behind your hot
bodies acting like in some video clip. What is the background
behind your style and beauty? Who are you? What are you
communicating? What price do we pay for this freedom?
What lines are you crossing? Are you sure of what you´ re doing?

Pepo Salazar (Spain, 1972): 18591372-N

Salazar's video '18591372-N' opens with a view on a gallery wall, covered with phosphorescent pink mural (just like the cheap adverts you see in local shopping areas, or on street billboards etc.) in which one can read all the secret numbers Salazar has. It deals with numbers and tax codes of his accounts, credit cards, as well as his passport number, pin numbers for his mobile phone, email etc. As an exercise in transparency in which the onlooker can perceive what these codes mean and make use of them as all the numbers were real and were available to whoever knew how to uncover them. Apart from that Salazar was interested in indicating a new way of defining the individual referring to all their numerical data, as a reflection on the individual not based on behavioural, political or spiritual sources but on numerical ones, which also speak about the effectiveness of their use.

The second phase refers to the action that develops in front of the camera and has to do with a reflection that said that vandalism was the last state of consumption. If we understand the act of desiring, consuming, using etc., as a process of which degradation is the last. Everything that falls into Man's hands is destined for degradation and only the instant of the exhibition is the perfect representation and will never be repeated.
In front of the pink wall on which all the secret numbers are shown, and dressed in a T-shirt with a print of his CV (more private data) in the style of the merchandising T-shirts used by rock bands to announce tours, Salazar proceed to open two extinctors. By doing so he let disappear the data on the wall, the exhibition space as well as himself in a white cloud.