| The virtual gallery nowhere is now here. Nowhere specifically but here and now anywhere with an Internet connection! Created out of the need to showcase international contemporary art in the times of social distancing. Stay tuned for monthly exhibitions, exploring ways of presenting artworks in digital environments. In may 2020, shortly after the first lockdowns and social distancing regulations were enforced in the Netherlands, me and a group of fellow art students had to organize an exhibition and present some of our artwork for the so called “Maydays”, a yearly event of the Minerva art academy in Groningen. However our Maydays plan had to change radically due to corona. No large scale paintings in a white cube, no opening speeches and no wine and cheese. Realizing that communicating in this strange time was very hard and time was little, we had to get started, as we were very close to the deadline and had zero plan. The new recipe was simple: start with a white canvas, paint something on it and pass it on to the next painter of the group. Filming this ‘relay race’, we created a documentary of the journey of the canvas (see below). For me this wasn’t really enough and I thought what other ways might there be to exhibit, now that thanks to covid, we cant exhibit. A small youtube premier just didnt feel like an exhibition for me. So I created a virtual gallery, a 3D space created with Artsteps which exhibited the passed-around painting, had a video screening of the documentary with a virtual couch and wine and cheese and presented some individual works from each of us. If people actually bothered to make an account on artsteps (no one did lol), we could’ve even seen each others avatars and chatted about the exhibition. This was the start of nowhere.gallery, an experiment of exhibiting in digital space in times of social distancing and digitalization. |
|
|