Gallerist statement
"In a mass society, the public is not in direct contact with cultural activities but is informed of them through the media. For example, the mass audience does not see an exhibition; it doesn’t experience a happening or a soccer match first hand but, instead, sees its projection in the news. Real artistic production stops having importance with its diffusion since it can only reach a diminished public. “To distribute two thousand copies in a big modern city is like shooting a bullet into the air and waiting for the pigeons to fall,” said Nam June Paik. Ultimately, information consumers are not interested in whether or not an exhibition occurs; it is only the image the media constructs of the artistic event that matters. [...]
The ultimate characteristic of the media is the de/realization of objects [...]
Works of art are, in reality, pretext to start up the apparatus of the media"
(Eduardo Costa, Raul Escari, Roberto Jacoby, "A Media Art (Manifesto)", 1966)
CONCRETE GALLERY belongs to a long tradition of interventions that aim at bringing to the surface the institutional conditions that contribute to the understanding of something as "art". A such, it operates as a critique of the gallery space as a privileged venue to access "art" and as a "reality distortion" field capable of turning an object into an "artwork". In this case, Coll.eo's CARJACKED (2012) is re-framed within the confines of a simulated art gallery - managed by Coll.eo.
COLL.EO is Colleen Flahery and Matteo Bittanti
San Francisco, November 1, 2012
CURRENT SHOW
ARTHUR RIMBAUD IN LIBERTY CITY (March 1, 2015 - March 14, 2015)
Arthur Rimbaud in Liberty City is a replay of David Wojnarowicz’ (1954-1992) photographic series Arthur Rimbaud in New York (1978-1979) developed within the virtual spaces of Grand Theft Auto IV (2008). Created by COLL.EO in collaboration with Iranian modder Amir Goreyshi, Arthur Rimbaud in Liberty City consists of 48 black-and-white images projected as 35 mm slides and a set of framed photographs. This exhibition at Concrete Gallery showcases fourteen photographs from the series.
PAST SHOWS
CARJACKED (November 1, 2012 - January 1, 2014)
Six BMW Art Cars were showcased wre shoecased in the gallery: Jackson Pollock, Piet Mondrian, Cy Twombly, Barbara Kruger, Julian Opie and Gerhard Richter.
