Super Flatland at White Conduit Projects, London from 16 September to 18 October 2020

Super Flatland at WCP
Wednesday 16 September to Sunday 18 October 2020
Opening: Wednesday 16 September, 3:00pm to 8:00pm

featuring: Glenn Brown, Michael Craig-Martin, Malcolm Crocker, Ori Gersht, Kate Groobey, Hannah Hughes, Yuuki Horiuchi, Paul Noble, Miho Sato, Yuichiro Tamura, Sinta Tantra, Sinta Werner, Andrea V Wright, Floating World prints

curated by Paul Carey-Kent and Yuki Miyake

“A dozen artists from Europe and Asia inhabit ‘Super Flatland’ at White Conduit Projects. Some are there as an artistic strategy, either for aesthetic reasons or to generate confusion between what is 2D and what 3D. Others investigate the various ways in which reality might get ‘flattened’ – when it goes online, for example.” -Paul Carey-Kent, 2020, Super Flatland

The exhibition includes work by Kate Groobey, winner of the 2018 Daiwa Foundation Art Prize.

“She has an intoxicating way of combining her own painted backdrop, dance moves, comically flat costumes, rapped words and music – thoroughly confusing levels of reality. In 2018 she saw the legendary statue of Senju Kannon, the multi-armed goddess holding symbolic instruments for the protection of her followers, in Japan.

In Groobey’s version a woman protects herself against the threats – whether internal or external is ambiguous – of Asshole and Stink: ‘Hey queen of poo / Whatʼcha gonna do? / Comb your soul? / It’s knotted though and through.’ Nine vignettes and nine imaginative kits see the heroine defend herself with such symbols as a giant pencil, arrows, stars and hearts. She ends as a triumphant owl: ‘Lightning strikes across my thighs / And all my enemies will die.’ -Paul Carey-Kent, 2020, Super Flatland

For Kate Groobey’s instagram account, click here

1 White Conduit Street Islington London N1 9EL

Opening Hours: Thu 11am– 7pm, Fri & Sat 12 – 6pm, Sun 11am–4pm, plus appointments

Telephone: 0775 448 6068 E. info@whiteconduitprojects.uk
www.whiteconduitprojects.uk

Superflat

Below has been taken from WCP’s instagram:

Super Flatland at @whiteconduitprojects curated by @paulcareykent and Yuki Miyake

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“There is a long history, both eastern and western, of artists being interested in flatness. The post-impressionists, most notably Gauguin, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec, adopted the aesthetics of flatness from Japanese models epitomised in the ‘Floating World’ print. The modern Japanese ‘Superflat’ movement, founded by Takashi Murakami, repurposes that history of using flattened forms as a means of critiquing the shallow emptiness of consumer culture. That originated prior to the Internet, but is consistent with similar concerns about the superficiality of the virtual world. The show’s title combines that Japanese perspective with the cult Victorian novel ‘Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions’ by Edwin A. Abbott, which satirically presents the possibilities of worlds in which there are one, two or four dimensions rather than three.”