Dafna Maimon
Video still and dialogue from “Indigestibles: And Then There’s Today / Can Us Hear Us”
4K Video and immersive installation
2020
Courtesy of the artist

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH DAFNA MAIMON

The protagonist is watching a nonstop report on the death of the last orangutan. She is also upset about having had to get up twice from the couch to answer the phone, both times to her mother calling by accident. Her fridge is stocked full with processed meats that she devours all day with no pause, while her intestines send up S.O.S. burps containing the following urgent messages:

us don’t understand us? do us understand us?
can us hear us?
uh, us.. let us tell us.. that, us like us..
hello? hi. hi?
can us stop us?

Marcello Maloberti
SE PERDO ME TROVO TE /
IF I LOSE ME I FIND YOU
Martellate, 2020
courtesy the Artist and Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH MARCELLO MALOBERTI

MY WORK COMES FROM A SCARE

Christine Sun Kim
Three variations of “See Zero”
2018
Charcoal and oil pastel on paper
125×125 cm each
Photo credit: 2019 White Space Beijing and Yang Wei

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH CHRISTINE SUN KIM

Since American Sign Language (ASL) does not have a written component like most other languages, we use English words as loan words (loosely known as “deaf English”) to express some signed visual concepts as written text via email or on social media.
“See Zero” could mean three things: “I see nothing,” “I can’t see a thing,” and “There’s nothing to see here.”

Adelaide Cioni
Pink Punk Piece
2018
Fabric, costumes for Pink Punk Performance
Courtesy the artist and P420, Bologna

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH ADELAIDE CIONI

To dress up as naked
I had to dress first
To ask myself what is it that I cover when I slip into jeans and t-shirt.
Then to undress once,
to think again about the pink of the flesh
as of something fake,
a convention, a cliché.
It can be true or false nobody cares.
I wondered what pink is.
I thought first of all it is to be exposed.
Maybe indecent, certainly vulnerable.
What a joyful color though, what sea of bliss.
To be in the skin. Maybe then, shame is in sex.
It’s in red it’s in black. These are the violent colors.
Here you really fight. You suffer. You are ferocious.
Immediately after that, shyness.
We’re all naked under our clothes.
Sometimes we are naked on top of them.

Eva and Franco Mattes
Personal Photographs, September 2009
2019
Cable tray, ethernet cables, digital images, Raspberry Pi single-board computers, micro SD cards, USB flash drives, custom software
Dimensions variable
Exhibition view, Team Gallery
Photo credits: Jeff McLane

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH EVA AND FRANCO MATTES

#!/bin/sh

echo “Beginning photo sync…”

#if [ “$(hostname)”==”rpa.local” ]; then
#echo “$(hostname -s)”
if [ “$(hostname -s)” = “rpa” ]; then
recipient_host=”rpb.local”
#recipient_host=”10.0.0.49″ #rpb
#recipient_host=”rpb”
echo “Sending photos to “$recipient_host”…”
else
recipient_host=”rpa.local”
#recipient_host=”10.0.0.1″ #rpa
#recipient_host=”rpa”
echo “Sending photos to “$recipient_host”…”
fi

usb_drive_name=”$(ls /media/pi/ | head -n 1)”
#usb_drive_name_escaped=”(command printf ‘%q’ $usb_drive_name)”
#usb_drive_name_escaped=${$usb_drive_name// /\ }
#usb_drive_name_escaped=${usb_drive_name// /_}

echo “Using USB drive:” $usb_drive_name

sender_path=/media/pi/$usb_drive_name/sending

recipient_path=/media/pi/$usb_drive_name/receiving

echo “Sending files in:” $sender_path
echo “Sending files to:” $recipient_host:$recipient_path

rsync –progress -a –recursive –ignore-times $sender_path/. pi@$recipient_host:$recipient_path

echo “Fin.”

Genesis Belanger
coins for the ferryman
2019
Porcelain and stoneware
Size variable
Courtesy the artist and Francois Ghebaly Gallery,
Los Angeles CA
Photo credits: Pauline Shapiro

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH GENESIS BELANGER

There seems to be a gulf between how little we understand what motivates our actions. Originally, I was fascinated by this unknowing and how it was – almost – weaponized against us by the advertising industry. More recently I have noticed how this inner disconnect affects us in a more intimate context: how we grieve. Loss is an inevitable part of life, yet we are so obsessed with living we have very little support for it culturally. This disincentivizes a present tense understanding of how we are affected by our grief. We mourn many things – a death being paramount – but the gravity of an ultimate loss does not negate the pain of lesser losses. We all mourn the big and small absences. It is time to pull all these messy feelings into the known.

Alejandra Hernández Studio, Bogotà, 2019
in the background
Alejandra Hernández, Andrea & Santiago, 2019

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH ALEJANDRA HERNÁNDEZ

What I intend to do are basically portraits of our time, of different ways of living, more than a final painting I see it as a document of people who are walking this earth and whom I sometimes have the pleasure to meet and translate said meeting into a canvas. More than a painting I see it as a social construct, where both sides are in constant dialogue and all our baggage can just drop for a few hours while we share the experience and concretely render it into a painting.

Santiago Reyes Villaveces, Harp, 2019.
Courtesy The artist, The Blank Contemporary Art, Fondazione Amleto Bertoni
Installation view. Sacristy of Sant’Ignazio former church, Saluzzo (CN), Italy

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH SANTIAGO REYES VILLAVECES

The Harp project consists in constructing an exploded copy of the Tópaga harp (1680) that occupies the architectural space of Sacristy of the Church of Sant’Ignazio.
The instrument’s design is deformed through the use of an elliptical structure with two foci-bridges.
Making use of the Sacristy’s open drawers, windows, and physical structure itself as resonance boxes, Harp fabricates a polyarchic harp (of multiple origins) as a flow of historical, architectonic, embodied, and decolonising frequencies that aim to destabilize the origin story delivered to the “new world” by the Jesuit harp.

Klaus Rinke
Taking Possession of the Mediterranean for the Arts
Spain, 1969
100 x 140 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH KLAUS RINKE

“I found that water was a sculptural material. In handling water, I concluded that filling up a sculpture with water takes time. A ton, how long to fill it up? How long to empty?” Rinke uses the element of water as a universal symbol of femininity and fertility, purification and flux, often focusing on the evaporation of water to depict its impermanence. In his art, he emphasizes water as an essential element focusing on its importance to life and human well-being. His work with water also serves to highlight his environmental concerns emphasizing the fragility, scarcity and interconnection of our global water sources.

Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg
Dark Side of the Moon, 2017
Stop motion animation
06:40 min.
Ed.: 4, II

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH NATHALIE DJURBERG & HANS BERG

One need not be a chamber
to be haunted –
one need not be a house –
the brain has corridors – surpassing
material place.

Far safer, of a midnight meeting
external ghost
than its interior confronting –
that cooler host.

Far safer, through an abbey gallop –
the stones a’chase –
than unarmed, one’s a’self encounter –
in lonesome place.

Ourself behind ourself, concealed –
should startle most –
assassin hid in our apartment –
be horror’s least.

The body borrows a revolver –
he bolts the door –
o’erlooking a superior spectre
or more.