“Data Spell” at The Border Project Space

Participating artists: Ilana Saydie, Carlos Franco, Masha Vlasova, Tatiana Istomina,  and Raza Kazmi

Curated by Jamie Martinez

July 6 – July 29, 2018

The Border is pleased to announce Data Spell, a group exhibition featuring artworks across mediums by Carlos Franco, Tatiana Istomina, Raza Kazmi, Ilana Savdie and Masha Vlasova.

What spell do artist cast throughout their practice to subvert a given situation?

Data Spell features the work of artists born into an ahistorical era in which time is received in cut digital micro slices, allowing spells cast through performance or technology to resolve or ameliorate issues of memory, history, migration, and identity.  Like something being unpacked; the real in the illusion disrupting reality.

“When we are dreaming, we forget, but immediately forget that we have done so; since gaps and lacunae in our memories are photoshopped out, they do not trouble or torment us.” What dreamwork does is to produce a confabulated consistency which covers over anomalies and contradictions.” (Mark Fisher). Wendy Brown suggested that dreamwork is the best model to for understanding contemporary forms of power, which operates on promises which are not only inconsistent but directly contradictory in our Neoliberal and De- democratization political era in her essay American Nightmare: Neoconservatism, Neoliberalism and de- democratization.

Data Spell offers a dreamy perspective to reflect on a reality capable of reconfiguring itself at any moment where spaces and psyches 

can be processed and remain at will.

All artists in this show speculates on technology and commodity becoming ideological tool shaping directly intimate life, interactions trajectory and discourse.

Carlos Franco, Ojala que llueva metadona (I hope it rains methadone), addresses the commercial commodity that has come to marginalize economies and countries in Latin America, the drug trade.

A symbiotic relationship of supply and demand between the north and the cartels and narco states down south. economic/ political conditions that creates an upsurge of immigrants heading up north to walk into cages. A mirror stasis of the other which implies the presence of the viewer moving around the installation as well as the fluctuations of narratives of I and other morphing with claims of ownership of spaces. Here and there. You and I, native and nonnative.

The political becomes personal, the personal illusional, a mirror effect of fluctuating narratives that changed based on our vantage point and the route we are taking.

Tatiana Istomina: Hélène’s Story is part of a series of works which are loosely based on the story of Hélène Rytman, who was murdered by her husband, French philosopher Louis Althusser, in 1980. Today Althusser remains an influential thinker and is known as a major theorist of ideology. According to his theory, ideology makes us think that we are free subjects, while in fact all our thoughts and actions are controlled by ideological institutions such as state, education, family, etc. Althusser’s books written before and after the murder continue to be published and read. Hélène, on the other hand, is completely forgotten, lost in the shadow of her famous husband. Istomina’s paintings extract “data” from Althusser’s memoir, “The future lasts forever”, which offered his account of the murder, and reconstruct what could be Hélène’s side of the story.

Ilana Savdie: Facewaver No.2, function as perversions of stock photography for health and beauty put through digital disembodiment, which result in the distortion of the canons of commercial images.

Raza Kazmi: Officer with Butterflies, finds a Hartford City Police Officer examining a small box full of live butterflies. The video is a place of contradiction and reinterpretation. Here, the officer is taking part in a type of sensitivity training, while being reminded of the obfuscated nature of his task via text marking each butterfly envelope. The obscure nature of this assignment is perhaps a place for reflection on the inherently flawed logic of policing philosophy and the supposed necessity of any one person having authority over another. The elements of intimacy present in this piece are an attempt to problematize and allow the viewer to deliberate on such pervasive logic.

Masha Vlasova: Her Type, opens with my mother loading a selfie of me into FaceApp—a smartphone application that generates realistic transformations of photographic portraits. She adds a “male” filter to the picture. With the “male” filter, my selfie resembles a portrait of my Russian father, now deceased, when he was my age. The image creates an opportunity for my mother to express her desire for me (via the image of me as my father), while my camera frames my mother’s image, fetishizing it. The video explores the submerged desire between me and my mother, an immigrant and professional actress, who is my subject and collaborator.

Data Spell is on view at 56 Bogard street, New York, 11206, from June 29nd to July 29nd 2018, curated by Bianca Boragi and Jamie Martinez, open Saturdays and Sundays, from 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM.  For additional information and inquiries, please contact Jamie Martinez at [email protected]

Carlos Franco, (b. San Juan, Puerto Rico) holds degrees in Philosophy and Visual Art (University of Puerto Rico), and a Master in New Genres (San Francisco Art Institute). Has presented projects at the Lab, SOMARTs, the Thing Quarterly, Diego Rivera Gallery (San Francisco), Lvl3 Gallery (Chicago), NARS Foundation (New York), Nikolaj Kunsthal (Copenhagen), Quinta del Sordo (Madrid), Universidad de Medellín (Medellín), among other trackable geolocations. Recent fellowships/grants @ NARS Foundation (New York), Can Serrat (Catalunya), Mass MOCA (Massachusetts). Conferences @ Universidad Complutense, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos III (Madrid), San Francisco Art Institute (hosted by the College Arts Association). @francocnarf  / www.cfrancomaldonado.com

Tatiana Istomina is a Russian-born US artist working with painting, drawing and video. She holds a PhD in geophysics from Yale University (2010) and MFA from Parsons New School (2011). Her works have been included in group exhibitions at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum (San Antonio), The Drawing Center (New York) and Gaîté Lyrique, (Paris) among others. Istomina had solo shows in New York (2010) and Houston (2013). She has completed several artist residencies, including the ACA residency, Salzburg Summer Art School, the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the AIM program at the Bronx museum of art. She is currently a participant of the Open Sessions program at The Drawing center. Istomina was nominated for Dedlaus foundation fellowship (2010), Kandinsky prize (2012) and received awards such as the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2011), the American Austrian Foundation Prize for Fine Arts (2011) and Eliza prize (2013).  www.tatianaistomina.com

Ilana Savdie (b. 1986, Miami, FL) was raised in Barranquilla, Colombia and Miami, FL and is now based in New Haven, CT.  She is an MFA candidate at Yale School of Art in Painting/ Printmaking where she will graduate in May 2018, she earned her BFA in 2008 from the Rhode Island School of Design.  She had solo exhibitions at Stream Gallery, and International Playground, Brooklyn, NY and Ars Antiqua Galería, Barranquilla, Colombia.  She was recently awarded the HP Blended Reality Grant Fellow from Yale University Center for Collaborative Arts and was an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center.  www.ilanasavdie.format.com

Masha Vlasova was born in Russia and grew up in New York. She is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker. She holds an MFA from Yale School of Art. She is a recipient the Fulbright Fellowship in Film-making and the JUNCTURE Art and Human Rights Fellowship at Yale Law School. Her works have been exhibited and screened at Anthology Film Archives, Abrons Arts Center in New York, and the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard University. She teaches at Indiana University and Cooper Union Summer Art Intensive. Her curated film series titled “Women Filmmakers at the Intersection of Documentary, Video Art, and Avant Garde” for IU Cinema is programmed for Fall 2018. www.mashavlasova.info

Raza Kazmi (b.1990, Islamabad, Pakistan) is a media artist who received his MFA at the MFA from Yale University at Sculpture Department in 2016.