Perzeptionema - Galerie Brigitte Schenk, Cologne, Sept. 1st/Oct. 26th 2006

 
 

Installation View

  Installation view
           

 

Copacabanera, 250 x 125 cm
Oil on Aluminium

  Sunset Boulevard, 62,5 x 62,5 cm
Oil on Aluminium

         
 

Sobremar, 125 x 62,5 cm
Oil on Aluminium

 

Elegância Carioca, 125 x 62,5 cm
Oil on Aluminium

           
 

Desvio azul, 62,5 x 31,5 cm
Oil on Aluminium

 

Network Map
Oil on Aluminium

       
 

Panorama

   

Web Interface:
http://perzeptionema.mediamorphose.org

           
Extract from:
Roberto Cabot -
A Rebel Against Purity,
by Noemi Smolik, 2006

...

"Mondrian’s static and, uncompromisingly rigid grid is transformed by Roberto Cabot into an elastic net which expands and contracts as it unfolds like a wave in a never-ending undulating flowing motion across the walls of the room. This net neither lends structure to the room not renders it finite. Like a spider’s web, single filaments spread over the walls, conveying the illusion of spatial depth where none is, and obfuscating depth where it exists. These lines generate a space which is neither static not finite. Just as in daily life, these spaces flow into each other, changing direction unexpectedly. Illusion dominates the space; a network camera linked to the computer and the Internet captures the viewers, and then throws the captured image onto the wall in the foyer, ensuring that the viewers see themselves only as they depart. But where is the camera located? And in what room does it capture the viewers? The real, experiential space becomes virtual, and the virtual space expands the real one; they too flow into each other. Participating in this game of illusions is the camera, a technical device invented to elucidate the world and deconstruct it into its individual components.

 

 

Among the canons of European Modernity during the 1960s and 1970s is the injunction that objets d’art should no longer be manufactured by hand, but, in accordance with the technological standards of the time, must be produced industrially using a technical device, be it a camera or a machine. The self-made artefacts, such as Oiticica’s huts were adjudged to be outmoded and inferior to the industrially manufactured boxes of the North American artist Donald Judd. As such, Oiticica’s huts also constitute a rebellion against this perspective which is dominated by Western modernity. Subsequent to his initial pictorial essays, Cabot also turned to the machine of his day, the computer. After some years spent exploring the virtual realm, he took up the brush again without, however, entirely renouncing the computer. Here too he embarked upon a path of the mutual interpenetration and cross-fertilisation of manual skills with the technological in order to facilitate new, unexpected experiences. "
...