Virtual Exhibition at ArtGate VR International, October 2021.
‘#postinternet’ questions today’s digital culture, created by the Internet. It looks at a society where the novelty of the ‘world wide web’, as a tool, has disappeared. Digital natives have come of age, describing new social cultures as they mature.
What does it mean to be an internet-raised individual? That’s the question the exhibition asks.
To the Collection, the Internet became ‘post’ in the early 2000s, as western governments truced a trade-off between social safety and individual privacy following the tragic fall of the twin towers in New York. Post-internet has quickly stretched since, becoming an artificial intelligence — with moral shortfalls.
The exhibition opens with the iconic late New York twin towers, in a collaborative Non Fungible Token (NFT) project by Samantha Heydt (USA, 1986) and Jacobo Garcia (Colombia, 1975). The opening work explores post-internet at its infancy, when the societal debate between anonymity and public security was first evident. The accompanying work by Adul Abdullah (Australia, 1986) exposes politically induced exploits that followed shortly after.
Central to the exhibition are paintings by Zhong Wei (China, 1987) and Mak Ying Tung 2 (Hong Kong, 1989). These works seek to confront post-internet socially, as it is today. Both millennial artists question the reality of being an internet-raised individual, through compositions clearly out of anime and video-game upbringings.
As the show progresses, notions of self-identity, anxiety, and social trust are realized through individual works by Stephanie Teng (Hong Kong, 1989) and Samantha Heydt. Elaine Chiu (Hong Kong, 1996) continues further with a cyber-surrealist work that confronts the way people today erode and preserve memory and nostalgia. Artist Sin Yuen (Hong Kong, 1967) ends the exhibition, a cyber influenced expression that portrays rain as a soothing narrative balacing #postinternet’s hectic digital pace.
‘#postinternet’ presents nine works by nine different artists from Australia, China, Colombia, Hong Kong, and the United States of America, with each work depicting a thoughtful interpretation of our current global, digital existence.
The Collection acquired this set of works between 2018 and 2021. Artwork ‘Hello, Goodbye, by Abdul Abdullah (Australia, 1986), is in association with the Kun Museum, in Bejing, China.
Featured works:
Video: #postinternet (Youtube Video Release)
