videoludica. game culture 

Eva and Franco Mattes
TRAVELING BY TELEPHONE

January 3 – 24, 2009
Reception for the artists: Saturday, January 3, at 12 noon
There will be a walk through the exhibition followed by brunch

Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke
2 Sunny House, 16/18 Mereweather Road
Behind Taj Mahal Hotel, Colaba, Mumbai 400 001
+91 22 2202 3030/ 3434/ 3636
Mondays – Fridays: 10 am – 6:30 pm, Saturdays: 11 am – 4 pm

"Immersive and quasi-immersive gaming and online cultures have infiltrated our personalities. Dashing across the labyrinthine never-endingness of the www and the gaming culture, Eva and Franco covet the many-ness of lives, opportunities and possibilities.
 
Traveling by Telephone is divided into three smaller suites. The first sequence features the ‘Annoying Japanese Child Dinosaur’ avatar portraiture series. It stars online avatars, which can also be found moseying around in the Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), Second Life.
 
The second entails videos depicting three synthetic performances – ‘Reenactment of Imponderabilia by Marina Abramovic and Ulay’ (2007), ‘Reenactment of The Singing Sculpture by Gilbert & George’ (2007) and ‘Reenactment of Chris Burden’s Shoot’ (2007) – enacted by the online avatars of Eva and Franco. These synthetic performances of iconic works were staged by Eva and Franco within the precincts of Second Life – enabled by machinima (machine + cinema), a form of filmmaking made popular by its ability to capture activity / inactivity within video games.
 
The final leg is a suite of prints profiling topographies and interiorscapes. The seemingly placid landscapes and interiors are in fact moored in the ultra-violent first-person shooter (FPR) videogame Half-Life, captured in atypical moments of tranquility which surface pre- and post-massive amounts of bloodshed. In their deliberate manipulation of the ongoing narrative they replicate the scenario of the highly doctored image / reality. Ironically, these virtual topographies printed on canvas, call to mind the landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich (1774 - 1840). ‘November (The tree of crows)’ is titled after the German Romantic painter’s ‘The Tree of Crows’ (1822), in which the belligerent virtual setup of Half-Life found an uncanny relation.
 
Eva & Franco have exhibited widely at leading venues and their work is in public collections such as the Walker Art Center,Minneapolis, USA, MEIAC (Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo), Badajoz, Spain, 21c Museum,Louisville, USA, David Howe Foundation, New York and MAK, Vienna. The artist couple lives in New York and Milan." (Fabio Paris)

Link: Fabio Paris Art Gallery

Link: Mumbai Times on Franco & Eva Mattes

Link: Eva & Franco Mattes