WILDE WEEK # 1

YOON LEE – Seen it all ...
KEVIN MURPHY – Computer Love

March 13 – March 20, 2009

Vernissage: Friday, March 13, 2009, 19 h

German version

WILDE GALLERY is pleased to announce WILDE WEEK #1, featuring Computer Love by Kevin Murphy and Seen it All by Yoon Lee.

The project Wilde Weeks consists of one-week showcases, spread throughout the year, derived from collaborations with various artists, curators and challenging contemporary thinkers that aim to catch the zeitgeist of current artistic activities in Berlin and beyond.

Kevin Murphy

In Computer Love, American artist Kevin Murphy presents an installation depicting a simulated chat room relationship between two unlikely protagonists that unfolds over time at an abandoned computer monitor.

Originally produced for the solo exhibition "We Are The Robots" (Malmö, Sweden, 2006), Computer Love is the artist's examination of online relations, cyber-sexual desire, and the construction of virtual identities within the parameters of queer internet communities.

Kevin Murphy

Murphy's re-contextualized chat room dialogue, exchanged between two anonymous, invisible participants, is at once intimate and graphic, touching on sexual violence, parodies of romance, dependency and addiction, and loneliness and desperation. As vicious insults and lascivious compliments appear on the monitor, so do claims of authenticity on the grounds of race, class, nationality, gender, and sexuality; creating a subtle yet sharp political satire.

The apparent aggression and hostility traded back and forth over the course of the 65 min. video installation confronts the limitations of cyber-sexual narration, while commenting on politically incorrect desire, objectification and pornography. At its core, the text charts the development of a virtual love affair, subscribed by the tropes of technological mediation and bound to the problematic implications of transforming a cyber-based, virtual attraction into its real-life equivalent.

The recipient of a DAAD artist fellowship, Kevin Murphy received his MFA from Malmö Art Academy in Sweden and his BA from Brown University in the United States. The artist lives and works in Berlin.

Yoon Lee

Yoon Lee, a Korean artist living and working in Berlin, will present Seen it All, a series of works made from found materials that reflects the artist's background in both architecture and design, as well as her ethnic heritage. Lee, a graduate of Harvard University's Architecture MFA program, embellishes discarded architectural elements with erotic images that nonetheless provide a stark contrast to the illicit perversion of Kevin Murphy's installation, Computer Love.

Yoon Lee

The sexuality evident in Lee's provocatively posed figures alludes to notions of Asian exoticism, objectification and romanticism. Recalling Occidental ornament and aesthetics, Lee's works are exquisitely rendered on layered glass, combining figurative minimalism with decorative abstraction to create objects rich with cultural symbolism that function simultaneously as both paintings and sculptures.

Yoon Lee studied architecture and design at Cornell University and Harvard University. Her paintings, performances, and sculptures have been shown and mentioned internationally. She relocated from New York City to Berlin in 2007.

Yoon Lee

opening
Friday, March 13, 2009, 19 h

exhibition
March 13 – March 20, 2009

opening hours
Tue– Sat | 12 – 18 h

location
WILDE GALLERY
Chausseestrasse 7
D-10115 Berlin
info@wilde-gallery.com
www.wilde-gallery.com