Sorry, this entry is only available in Polish.

This is a mechanism by which it is possible to remain in the place that you live, without exposing others or being exposed, while still being able to experience the presence of resistance in three dimensions. In my own private apartment, you will be able to experience the encounter between body and law while managing to come out without a single scratch. Your guilt will accompany you throughout the spaces as you digest the resistance digitally. This is the possibility of staying in isolation and being present in all places in the real world.

Over the last few months, large-scale protests have been ongoing in Israel. A number of organizations, with the main one being the “Black Flags” movement, protest against a range of issues: against the Prime Minister, where the protesters are demanding his resignation due to the indictment against him; against the erosion of state institutions, emphasising harm to the rule of law system; against the treatment of the economic crisis created in Israel due to the corona pandemic; protests by sectors affected by the economic crisis, including the self-employed, employees, teachers, social workers, restaurateurs and people in the fields of sports and culture. Many civilians were injured due to police violence.

SEE THE PROJECT > thevirtualcanvas.site

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Regev Amrani (1988) is a video artist and sculptor and a graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design (BFA) in the Fine Art Department 2016. In changing settings, Amrani combines sculptural installations, sound, video works, and autobiographical information with contemporary social and political situations.
On the surface of many of his works there is a desire to distance masculine violence and sexuality. The ideas of impulse and desire are disinfected, purified and cleansed through various mechanical filtering objects. These mechanisms dismantle the physical experience of the body with the help of these filters.

The House of Protest is a part of The Virtual Canvas online exhibition.

The project “Das Nicht nichtet” is about the growing fatigue with the void, which feels even more wearing during the second lockdown. The presentation contains five objects to be found between an abundance of an empty space.
The new series of digital drawings created by Maess, who in her artistic practice usually uses the more traditional mediums of drawing and painting, reflects on the feeling of constant tiredness and uncertainty that accompanies the pandemic.

* Das Nicht nichtet / Nothingness nothings / Nictwo się nicestwi
quotation from “What Is Metaphysics?” a lecture by the philosopher Martin Heidegger,
first presented to the faculties of the University of Freiburg on July 24, 1929 as inaugural address

SEE THE PROJECT  >  www.thevirtualcanvas.site

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Maess Anand is a Polish artist based in Düsseldorf. After graduating from Warsaw Elsner School of Music, she graduated with MFA at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and was recipient of a scholarship at the Escola Superior de Artes e Design in Porto, Portugal. In 2012, Maess Anand was nominated to the Grand Prix at the FID Prize Paris, and in 2013 she was shortlisted to the Strabag International Art Award in Vienna, Austria. Amongst others, she exhibited at, Museo di Santa Cecilia in Rome (2010), CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw (2010), Program Gallery in Warsaw (2011), Wroclaw Contemporary Museum (2013), Galeria Miejska Arsenal in Poznan (2013), BWA Sokól in Nowy Sacz (2013), The Starak Family Foundation in Warsaw, The Drawing Center in New York (2014), Polish Institute in Budapest (2015), Kasia Michalski Gallery in Warsaw, (2015), Trestle Gallery in New York (2016), Warsaw Austrian Cultural Forum (2019), Equity Gallery in New York, IK Projects in Lima, Peru (2019) and at Biennale de la Biche on deserted island near Guadeloupe (2017).

Maess Anand was a recipient of numerous fellowships including: Leipzig International Art Programme in Leipzig (2014) Virginia Center for Creative Arts (2017), Residency Unlimited in New York (2018) and The Corporation of Yaddo in Saratoga Springs (2018). With Alex Urso, Maess Anand curated Biennale de La Biche; the smallest biennale in the world held on a deserted island near Guadeloupe. The event has been reviewed by The Guardian, Hyperallergic, Artnet, Art Review, Observer (2017). Her drawings were presented in Vice Magazine, FUKT Magazine for Contemporary Drawing and The Lancet Oncology.

maess.eu

Das Nichts nichtet is a part of The Virtual Canvas online exhibition.

In December 2019, Laura Ginès and Pepon Meneses co-directed a video essay entitled “Jugar al carrer” ( “Playing in the Street” ) for “Soy Camara” – an online TV programme produced by Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB).
“Urban spaces of play are designated as separate zones, segregating them from the bustle and chaos of the city. This separation destroys the very nature of play and what it has always been: learning to live together and relate with the world. This episode of ‘Soy Cámara’ is a nostalgic celebration of the street as a place of growing up, something which the zoning of cities may no longer provide” – explains the artists.
Published exactly one year later, as a part of a collage created by Laura Ginès for “The Virtual Canvas” website, the video gains new meanings placed in a new context of the pandemic reality.
What will be the long term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on public space? Will the street remain a place for free play and spontaneous social interaction? If so, in what ways?

“Playing in the Street” (“Jugar al carrer”), 2019
Produced by: Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona
Directors: Laura Ginès and Pepon Meneses
Editing: Laura Ginès and Taller Estampa
‘Soy cámara’ team: Víctor Diago
Proofreader: Jaume Ortolà
English subtitles: Cruz Rodríguez Juiz

SEE THE PROJECT  >  www.thevirtualcanvas.site

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Laura Ginès is and an independent filmmaker based in Barcelona. A graduate in Illustration, Art and Design. Some of her films are part of Xcèntric Archive, the experimental program of CCCB (The Barcelona Center of Contemporary Culture), and they have been screened in specialised cinemas like the Cinemàteque of San Francisco, Anthology Film Archives of New York or Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.
She runs her own art in motion studio. She is a lecturer in storytelling in Elisava, Barcelona School of Design and Engineering. She is also a member of Cranc, a team of filmmakers that organizes experimental film projections in an old printing house.

lauragines.com/

Playing in the Street is a part of The Virtual Canvas online exhibition.

The images used in “Covid Playgrounds” were taken in Warsaw during COVID-19 pandemic lockdown (April 2020), when several restrictions on the use of public space and social distancing were introduced to protect the public health.

Using the model of the popular children street game hopscotch (and incorporating “heaven” and “hell” fields which are typical elements to the Polish version of the game), Post Noviki explores the ironic, yet frightening development of the public space during a pandemic.
The work invites the viewer to contemplate on how COVID-19 will affect the way we use and perceive the public space and what the future of urban planning and city design in a post-COVID-19 world could be.

SEE THE PROJECT  > www.thevirtualcanvas.site

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Post Noviki is a studio established by Marcin Nowicki and Katarzyna Nestorowicz, based in Warsaw, Poland.
Studio’s signature is a post critical approach to graphic design and the idea of constant redefining the borders of wide-ranging practice.
P-Noviki create works across various media, generally in close dialogue with artists and curators.

P-Noviki projects have been published, in IDPure, Slanted, Introducing Culture Identities (Gestalten), Pretty Ugly (Gestalten), It’s Nice That. They have served as external consultants at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. They lectured at art schools and universities across Europe and Asia, run workshops at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht and the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, displayed their commissioned and self-initiated project both in museums of contemporary art as well as graphic design shows, blurring boundaries between the disciplines.

noviki.net/

Covid Playgrounds is a part of The Virtual Canvas online exhibition.

Satisfying the housing needs of the society is one of the basic tasks of the modern world. Yet at the same time, the world is getting louder and more cramped than ever before. Regardless of what we want or plan, the space for rest is merging with the place of work.

The comfort of home is gradually commodified. Workplaces in co-working spaces and large corporations are made to look homely, while laptops are often marketed as devices to be used from the comfort of your own bed. Once given the possibility to work remotely, paid work has crept into the space of home. We work from the bedroom, the kitchen table, and the toilet.*

*Aleksandra Gordowy, Dom jako przestrzeń produktywna i nieproduktywna [Home as a productive and unproductive space], Bęc Zmiana, 2020

The text used in the work entitled “Compression” is based on articles in The Guardian describing the housing problems of British people during the Sars-Covid-19 epidemic.

SEE THE PROJECT  > www.thevirtualcanvas.site

ABOUT THE ARTISTS 

Why Quit (Karolina Balcer & Iwona Ogrodzka)
Collaboration, acquiring knowledge, the power of friendship and community building are important factors of our work. We have been working together closely since 2016, and the Why Quit initiative, launched in 2019, is the result of our experience, including the establishment of the bottom-up Wykwit Gallery (2015-2019), the Wykwitex Group (since 2017) and many joint projects, e.g. during our residency in KulturKontakt in Vienna (2018). Why Quit is a nomadic initiative which, apart from acting in a duet, attracts creative people to critically comment on social, political and economic situations. We believe that art can be one of the tools to put pressure on the structures that make up the harmful system.

why-quit.com

Compression is a part of The Virtual Canvas online exhibition.