THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION 2.0
Curated by Martyn Reed
Reedprojects is launching its successfull Oslo exhibition, ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’ in Stavanger, introducing some of the finest international names in Urban Contemporary to the gallery’s roster.
Exhibition dates: July 21t - Aug 14th
Salvågergata 10, 4006 Stavanger
“Apocalypse. A disquieting feature of this annual exhibition — to which the patients themselves were not invited — was the marked preoccupation of the paintings with the theme of world cataclysm, as if these long-incarcerated patients had sensed some seismic upheaval within the minds of their doctors and nurses.”
JG Ballard “The Atrocity Exhibition”
Reed Projects and Nuart in association with Oslo’s Galleri A and A Minor are proud to present “The Atrocity Exhibition”, an exhibition of national and international artists titled after the JG Ballard novel of the same name. The show is dedicated to artists exploring the dirty underbelly of contemporary pop culture, celebrity politics, neo liberal economics and the alienation it contrives to create in order to thrive. We present 14 artists from across the globe, both studio based and “Street Artists” from South-Korea to the US, Spain to Canada, Finland to Norway.
The exhibition sets out to explore and present a series of themes common to both the late 1960’s (when the book was first published) and present day concerns. For many, The Atrocity Exhibition is J.G. Ballard’s most important work. It reads like an instruction manual in how to disrupt mass media and recontextualise technology. How are present day artists, In an era of smart phones, high speed internet access and the dawning of “smart” cities, portraying urban life?
“In a sense, the phrase “atrocity exhibition” is a strictly literal description of this media landscape as it emerged in the early 1960s, populated by images of Vietnam, the Kennedys, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. The novel deals with the violence that haemorrhaged in the 1969 in which it was published: Manson, Altamont, War across the USA. But, for Ballard, the events of 1969 are merely the culmination of a decade whose guiding logic has been one of violence; a mediatized violence, where “mediatization” is a profoundly ambiguous term which doesn’t necessarily imply a disintensification. As they begin to achieve the instantaneous speed Virilio thinks characteristic of postmodern communication, media (paradoxically) immediatize trauma, making it instantly available even as they prepackage it into what will become increasingly preprogrammed stimulus-response circuitries.”
Mark Fischer
The parallels here with the rise of the right and the dominance of neo liberal economics in the shaping of our cities and culture should be obvious. Indeed, several of the artists come to Oslo direct from their success at Banksy’s recent award winning Dismaland show in the UK.
