Interface of the Abyss
Curated by Frank WANG Yefeng
August 31 - October 5, 2024
Opening Saturday, August 31, 2024, from 5 - 7pm
“If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
— Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche (1886)
“... an interface is not something that appears before you but rather is a gateway that opens up and allows passage to some place beyond.”
— The Interface Effect, Alexander Galloway (2012)
There exists an intricate relationship between the interface and the abyss. Galloway underscores how the interface mediates our interaction with digital environments, influencing what we perceive and how we act. The interface serves as a multifaceted threshold, an in-between space where visible interactions meet the hidden dimensions beyond. Acting as a gateway, it connects us to a veiled landscape of deeper meanings — an “abyss.”
The abyss may appear dark, rife with the temptation of demons... We fear it and yet cannot resist sneaking a glance, or perhaps even dare to gaze directly into it. What is hidden there remains elusive, this unknowability fuels our boundless imagination. The desires and thrills it offers may promise extreme experiences, but be cautious — delving too deep without a requisite reserve of inner fortitude risks losing oneself.
For Nietzsche, comprehending the “gazing back effect” of the abyss is a means to transcend the dichotomy of good and evil, and our common knowledge. At Below Grand, the hidden space behind the storefront window precisely embodies the interface to such an abyss. As an unconventional gallery space situated in an Asian restaurant wholesale store, Below Grand’s exhibitions can provoke suspicion and fascination at once.
In Frank WANG Yefeng’s inaugural curatorial project at Below Grand, Interface of the Abyss, artists also utilize various interfaces to evoke mysterious worlds that lie behind. They gaze back into us. Through flat LCD screens, printed luster photo paper, linen canvas, translucent resin, and an art book, these artists engage the interface as gateways to conceive unimagined realms and encourage us to embrace new realities. There is no metaphysical certainty here, only alternative perceptions of our nature, technology, surroundings, and very existence. Their artworks are not driven by simple goals or rhetorical ideologies, but rather offer evidence of spiritual transformation.
Hence, the essence of this exhibition becomes a transitional phase — a necessary leap that allows for the emergence of new perspectives and possibilities. While the interface can be deceptive, the artists’ creations are honest. By questioning visible “realities,” they guide us to seek invisible “truths.” Interface of the Abyss is a portal to an autonomous zone of interaction. It is concerned as much with unknownness and obfuscation as with connectivity and transparency (Galloway). The question that surfaces is this: In such an abyss, do you see danger and chaos, or emancipation and inspiration?
Text by Frank WANG Yefeng
___________
Exhibition Review: Click here
Comentarios