November 17th – January 19th, 2017
Opening November 17th 6 – 9 pm
Mage presents the work of Aaron Cohen, Dana Levy, Enrique Ramírez, and Erica Stoller.
The exhibition is accompanied by piece of performative writing and publishing by Christopher
Hamamoto and Federico Pérez Villoro.
Organized by Roxana Fabius.
Historically, a mage was defined as someone who possessed a special type of knowledge. A
learned person, who could through language, manipulate objects and people, attaining the
desired effect of their spell. Today, technologists with specialized knowledge write code that
manages objects and people. However, our difficulties to understand the technologies we use,
leave us in a position of impotence. The artists and designers included in the exhibition take a
poetic stance at technological opacity, to playfully manage the seeming magic spells they cast
around us.
Dana Levy produced an archeological site in which layers of time are confounded, and fossils
are brought to life, to reveal the relationship between mining interventions and the long-lasting
results on the land. Aron Cohen surgically dismembers tools only to reassemble them through
the accumulation of their inside parts, thus creating a thick layer of transparent material that
doesn’t let light through. This piece is accompanied by a meditative guide to the end of the
world. Enrique Ramirez takes the viewer on a journey to the salt flats of Uyuni, Bolivia, where
the sky and the earth are continuous with each other, and the elements of the shaman’s
magical mask get a contemporary update. Erica Stoller built an installation made of the cables
that wondrously disappear from our sight while introducing the invisible pulses of energy we
so much depend on in our daily life. Christopher Hamamoto and Federico Pérez Villoro
disclose the secret codes that printers leave in all our documents, looking back at their
relationship with centuries-old encrypting practices. This group of works focuses our attention
on how technologies and infrastructures create a mysticism around their functions that is akin
to magic, while projecting towards the past, present and future tools of the mage.
The exhibition is the New York premiere of “Pipelines and Sinkholes” by Levy and “Un Hombre
que Camina” by Ramírez, which was exhibited at the 2017 Venice Biennale “Viva, Arte Viva.”
Mage is supported by the generous support of the Artis Grant Program.
ARTWORK:
OPENING RECEPTION:
SPECIAL EVENT:
