third issue of emagazine

Walking the path of editing the third issue of emagazine,
it was clear that we had a great deal of amazing projects to
exhibit pointing, in most cases, to different subjects and
themes, but no matter the underlying topic, all came to
complete the atmosphere of dialogue and collaboration we
wanted since the begening.
emagazine has deeply settled its approach as a social
minded publication and platform, this time featuring
Katarzyna´s project, Olympia, regarding her personal
experience with Hodgkin´s disease and how has she faced it
making a strong statement while combining – aesthetically
speaking- her work with Manet´s Olympia´s nudity. In
fact we wanted to go further, we wanted to add non-art
related opinions from people who has also suffered the
same circumstances: Kimberly D. Holland, president of
the Hodgkin´s Foundation, currently under threatment,
has kindly help us get a better picture, and even more,
she guided us into her commitment of financing, through
her Foundation, those experimental investigations that
certanly improve patiens´ life quality, and for the first time
emagazine was not only reffering a subject but linking it,
using art as breakeven point, with possible resolution. Al of
a sudden this huge effort make sense we where as part of the
process, expanding art capabilities to affect, in very positive
way, human being´s life. At the end, to honor Katarzyna´s
work and bravery, a young talented pianist, Harold Lopez-
Nussa, composed Prelude for Olympia, a pationate small
piece unique in its kind, never heard before, presented in
emagazine as pentagram (not music to be heard but to be
read) as the idea is that only a few, by reading the notes
could feel it, as only a few by suffering the disease could
image what is like.
Open doors to dialogue, design as it affects life, institutional
approaches, curatorial issues, video art and compelling
projecs, artists´ retrospective, journalism view on zones
in conflict like Iran, collaboration notes, fantasy and
storyboards, community programs as social scupltures, and
much more is to be discover among the more 100 pages of
this issue of emagazine. We do hope you enjoy and find your
way, your ideal project, your space with us.

Editor’s Note

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This late May far into June issue of emagazine is nothing but a handpicked selection of art inspired in both, real and abstract subjects always surrounding and flirting with audience reactions. Emagazine has come to reach an imaginary world brought to us as a plane field where you can join every artist’s worries and dreams.

Invited friend Gordon Cheung, unveils a rainbow-filtered reality envisioning a dark future, with a complex background that upholds iconography supported with animals and conspiracy theory. Don’t be surprise if you find yourself liking this scenario, learning to love destruction and dealing with a controversial feeling of denying this as a future and at the same time loving Gordon’s place for you in it. Of course if you get to this point where you share Gordon’s way of seen, is because you have gone deep into Marilyn’s text, paramount for those matching her words with such an incredible way of doing art.

If this magazine had something on its side, was precisely its ability to grant spaces to show concepts the most avant-garde thinkers had backed: Biennale de Paris is an example of it, and it brings the abstract component to our hands and it does so, with a strange proposal: Gasc Demolition, almost a military solution used to take down old art places, old art sanctuaries, old art ideals, giving us a second chance to reevaluate art from its very basics. Premise: destroy paradigms to “build” art without reference.

Silence was the only thing emagazine wanted not to have here, and Raphael came with his text about Zimbabwean art to guide us into knowledge and wisdom, jumping from one geopolitical spot to another. History marked by a population that has suffered and still struggles to be heard, taking art as a self-expression form to send the clearest message possible.

At the same time it is easy to find Kristian and Wagner, both playing with the idea of the finitude of life. The first one brings almost a formula to defeat extinction by collecting DNA samples and therefore saving our genetics for a future “reconstruction of humanity” …just in case, you know. Wagner cares for a more than old fear: the fading of life, a boatman’s light sailing away until it goes out of sight, you will see this video until you feel a sensation well known to you: fear to death, self preservation is in play mode. You’ll feel your body, and will touch either your leg or stomach, but you will be compelled to feel, to prove that this light that fades is not yours.

We have fought for a magazine where approaches were as different and diverse as possible, all of this because we wanted to overcome the idea that art is only related to pretty and right-sensed creations collected or exhibited with a very fashionable aesthetic purpose. Then emagazine found Julia working, burning boundaries by resuming art experiences right from spaces in conflict, world areas where legacy or a present situation discard art as objects. Instead you can find this “places” presenting themselves as actors in a show, where, until now, they were the camera guy.

Arrechea gives no brake to those searching safe Heaven far from housing slump, a reminder, now in water color, soon to be transformed in an extraordinary set of pieces, of how stupid the entire economic system can be, is the leitmotiv behind his idea.

Based of course in the greedy human nature, desperate to accumulate power and money, this last element, (money) has been also the core subject of Matthieu Laurette’s
“Let’s make a lot of money!” piece: a clear statement of what you should you be centering your efforts in now, place our attention in the never ending controversial economic flow and how we get always the worst part of it.

Following its own rules Gabriela and duet Dylan & Fogg, find each one of them a new way to grant colors, shapes and figures the ability to transmit sensations and enigmas right by looking at them. The ability to deconstruct recognizable patterns or images into basic colors or to take geometrical drawings out of its context (context has been a bizarre human centered theory) could lead to new meanings granting the mind with a double experience: free will and imagination.

Absurd as it may sound, there is an ongoing war on seeds, what to plant, where to plan it and how to trick consumers and farmers to start and continue with crops genetically modified. Risky business addressed this time by Lucia with an installation with rice as basic material, a protest without precedent if you count the time and effort deployed to make this work available to your eyes.

Definitely emagazine wanted Studio Banana and their collaboration; Locutorio Colon is, since you start reviewing its documentation, a project where audience is the center point, and as soon as the first person starts moving and makes phone calls to motherland a social element appears and graphics begin to show that former colonial countries population movements are undertaking a huge step into an undeniable phenomena: reverse colonization.

Ícaro and Pia are both into the dialog but in very different ways. Ícaro takes components no matter from where, used or new materials, recycling intentions and getting them back into new interactions stages where they can redefine their core purpose. A second life, second chance acting as mother of new conversations, maybe we shall listen. Pia empowers the audience and gives them a subject, a starting point, a microphone or a place where voice can take all the air, all of a sudden conversations, declarations and then a new side of us arises, a work in progress that never ends. Pia´s soapboxes stands allow others to rephrase what’s on their minds; a true act of democracy where time plays no role, truth is everlasting.

Paul, Max, Roxana, Geison and Moritz had it right, emagazine needed a thunder to shake people’s mind, to act as another yet never sufficient source of shouting against something as bloodcurdling as child abuse. A brilliant and sarcastic text supported by astonishing photography combining art and condemnation.

Emagazine hopes that when you get to this point, definitely the end of this editor’s note, you which to take a back trip to the first page and start seen again all these projects; we truly want to count in anyway possible.

Carlos M. Leal
Senior Editor

Wolf-Günter Thiel

What does it mean when artists begin to define themselves by collecting objects, rather than creating them? Artists simulate scientific research by exhibiting things they have gathered, categorized, documented, counted, archived, stacked and stored by analogical thinking as Michel Foucault puts it.

Others are documenting, counting, and archiving aspects of their lives and making objects that record these processes. Kristian von Hornsleth plays on this idea and deconstructs it by mystification of the act of archiving as well as the way of storing the archives. The idea is to create a story like Homers Illiade and make people part of a story which people may tell in the future to understand our times from a future perspective. Hornsleth claims the position of an artist as an “Übermensch”.

Kristian von Hornsleth is collecting blood samples and dna of people who are dedicated Hornsleth Art Lovers. In earlier times of civilization we would call it a tribal ritus. A ritus in order to manifest the tribal existence in a far away mythological future. Hornsleth himself as the shamane of his own people conserves their cultural existence. His artistic act is a synonym for the cave paintings, which show tribal hunting scenes in the pre historical times of human existence. The wish is the documentation of existence as “deep storage” of dna as part of the individual blood prove. The technological believe in progressive natural sciences evokes the idea of another cycle of existence in a far away future. The believe is that future science can evoke the today human individuals through their dna . Hornsleth himself speaks of this possibility a second existence. Earlier civilizations would have
respected an approach like this as “übermenschlich”…

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