Work by Jan Robert Leegte features in the exhibiton Spatial Affairs at Ludwig Museum in Budapest from April 29th 2021.

Image: Jan Robert Leegte, Google Maps as a Sculpture (2017).

spatial affairs

The exhibition »Spatial Affairs« at Ludwig Múzeum Budapest explores artistic reactions to the questions of spatiality and spatial perception, especially in times of computer-generated virtual reality.

Questioning the inner consistency of space, its philosophical and ontological status, its attachment and relationship to reality, has long been a latent undercurrent in the visual arts. This occasionally passionate, other times rather secretive attachment to such ontological affairs may have caused strong feelings in certain betrayed parties—narrative, for example—yet the relationship has proved to have a persistent hold.

If its termination is unthinkable, questioning around space and its entanglement with reality has also been continually reframed by the proliferation of immaterial spheres that become legitimate parallel dimensions of our perception, expression, experience, knowledge, communication, and analysis. With the arrival of generative imagery, reflecting on this only becomes more pertinent.

Fascination with computers has always been based on the fact that these programmable machines can generate representational and non-representational images, a set of which might add up to an entire virtual reality. The arrival of the computer redefined spatial perception and the idea of immersion; it amplified the mind’s structural tendency to analyse its surroundings and to project and produce alternative spheres.

The exhibition »Spatial Affairs« explores artistic reactions to these matters, including pre- and post-computational approaches from the early avant-garde through conceptualism to very recent works of art. It points at the mutual dependence between the algorithmically created and the palpably real. It embraces the virtual as action, without the agency of matter.

In »Spatial Affairs« the binary relationship between the actual and the virtual, the real and the possible, evaporates into a multidimensionality in which the only betrayed party is dualism, leading to exploded axes of complex and multiplied notions of space.

Impressum
Giulia Bini (curator), Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás (curator)

Exhibition team
Curatorial Assistance: Jan Elantkowski (Ludwig Múzeum Budapest), Fruzsina Feigl (Ludwig Múzeum Budapest)

Contributing artists
Morehshin ALLAHYARI, Andreas ANGELIDAKIS, Carola BONFILI, Adam BROOMBERG & Guy de LANCEY & Brian O’DOHERTY, Petra CORTRIGHT, Agnes DENES, Aleksandra DOMANOVIĆ, Louise DRULHE,
​​​​​​​Wojciech FANGOR, Stanislav FILKO, Lucio FONTANA, Dora GARCÍA, Sam GHANTOUS, János GULYÁS, Hans HOLLEIN, Lauren HURET, JODI, Hiroshi KAWANO, Katarzyna KOBRO, Alicja KWADE, Oliver LARIC, Sam LAVIGNE & Tega BRAIN, Jan Robert LEEGTE, LOU CANTOR, Stano MASÁR, Cildo MEIRELES, Rosa MENKMAN, METAHAVEN, Imre NAGY, Georg NEES, Robert OLAWUYI, Gyula PAUER, Goran PETERCOL, Sascha POHFLEPP & Alessia NIGRETTI & Matthew LUTZ, Àngels RIBÉ, The RODINA, Rafaël ROZENDAAL, Jeffrey SHAW, Andrej ŠKUFCA, Károly TAMKÓ SIRATÓ, Viktor TIMOFEEV, UNRATED (BESOROLÁS ALATT), Gyula VÁRNAI

Organization / Institution
Ludwig Múzeum Budapest
Partners
»Spatial Affairs« is conceived as part of the international cooperation project »BEYOND MATTER: Cultural Heritage on the Verge of Virtual Reality«, in collaboration with the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and the Ludwig Múzeum – Kortárs Művészeti Múzeum, with the contribution of the Aalto University.

 

Read more here.

Publication date: 5 May '21