Check out our #6toSee for July 2017, a selection of six art exhibitions at some of the London’s best art galleries. Our critics pick the six must-see art exhibitions in London for this month. We hope you like them!
1. Rosana Antolí y Estela Oliva. Art Night de White Chapel Gallery. 1st July. Ryder Project y Thomas More Square, Londres. Art Night is a free contemporary arts festival that puts art into extraordinary locations around London for one night a year, encouraging the public to experience art and their city through entirely fresh eyes. Each year the festival partners with a leading cultural institution and curator, focusing on a different area of London to explore its distinctive identity, culture and architecture through various forms of art.
http://www.artnight.london/visitors/
2. José Carlos Naranjo y Alan Sastre ‘Black Trunk of the Pharaoh PV’ . 22 June to 12 July. Unit 1 Gallery, London. ‘Black Trunk of the Pharaoh’ relates to the mystery of inspiration and the inexplicable source of creativity. Asked about his aesthetic principles, the celebrated singer of cante jondo (deep song) Manuel Torres replied that he never allowed himself to be carried away by the ordinary or the overly familiar, “In cante jondo, what one has to look for and find, is the black trunk of the pharaoh.” Analogous to Torres’ search, the two painters in this exhibition are looking for the black trunk, an Iberian version of Pandora’s Box that was opened to unleash all evils into the world, leaving only hope behind.
http://unit1gallery-workshop.com/project/black-trunk-of-the-pharaoh/
3. Aldo Urbano y Daniel Moreno: ‘You are too alert to sleep any longer’. 2 July. London. It is an intervention in a room of a private house in London. In this context, Daniel Moreno Roldán will play the video game MUD through which he will try to dream words in a language still unknown. As the game allows these types of breaches, Daniel will recreate them and perform a series of Live Gameplays through the Youtube platform. In parallel, Aldo Urbano will interpret some of the narrative bursts that the game spits out to give them an image. These will be visions of a muddy tone, which will remind the marsh – a place where the characters of MUD throw their treasures and belongings in exchange for recognition – to the point where Daniel can end up confusing the room in which he plays with the deeper place of the swamp. In addition to this, on the occasion of the exhibition, the writer Víctor Balcells has published the text ‘Mimesis and loss’ in which he reflects on the construction of the spiritual in virtual worlds.
http://www.artistsarewelcome.com/Daniel-Moreno-Roldan-Aldo-Urbano
4. Solimán López: ‘CELESTE’. SCAN Project Room, 5th to 29th of July . London. ‘CELESTE’ questions the use of high technology for the purpose of constructing an alternative digital image of the sky, a synthesis of real-time processed data (Light, location, temperature). The result is an image that, while recalling the original content, becomes a digital proxy of its subject. Image becomes information, human perception of reality is replaced by computational RGB code. Behind CELESTE lies the implicit question of the appropriateness of analogue methods to capture an ever more complex reality and how human technology shapes our needs. The work of Solimán López focuses on Digital technology, from a technical and conceptual perspective, creating pieces of digital, interactive and media art as well as performance. He uses strong references to art history, and the social changes induced by the technological revolution and the new languages provided by these technologies.
5. Leonor Serrano: ‘Dialogues in the Exercise of Jumping in the Air’,10 am to 1 pm, Sunday 9 July, Swiss Church, London. For the past year, Serrano Rivas has been working on her biggest project to date — a lyrical film entitled ‘The Dream follows the mouth (of the one who interprets it)’. Shot within the Swiss Church in London, the film considers the influence that architecture has on activities that exist within, or in relation to it. This is evident in the film’s scenography, which echoes architectural motifs of the building — for example, the mirrored walls and panels, geometric forms and the semicircular shape of the church’s apse. Serrano Rivas worked with 4 dancers, 2 glass harpists, an organist, and a cinematographer to consider how notions familiar to drama — that of action, rehearsal, and spectator — might stem from and apply to places of worship.
6. Juan delGado: ‘Altered Landscape’, 17 June – 6 August, New Art Exchange. Mezzanine Gallery, Nottingham. A new body of work by Juan delGado which traces a personal narrative through the scarred vistas of Europe in the midst of the largest mass migration in living memory. In 2016 delGado travelled to Greece, Macedonia and Calais and recorded the journeys taken by refugees, many of whom are from Syria and northern Iraq. The artist did not film these ‘invisible’ people who proliferate our media, rather he chose to capture the traces of their existence: the fleeting moments and marks left on the land as they pass through to find safety. ‘Altered Landscape’ incorporates video, photography, light and sound. Presented as an immersive installation, it invites the viewer to navigate the gallery space and absorb the experiences of travelling through an unfamiliar landscape reminiscent of journeys made by many refugees. It reflects on the current situation in Europe, at the time when many European countries are fortifying their borders with wire fences and watchtowers to stop the flow of refugees. Juan delGado has been awarded an INSIDE commission from New Art Exchange and DASH. INSIDE is a Disability Arts commissioning programme led by DASH with funding from Arts Council England. Altered Landscapes is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and by the Spanish Embassy Office for Cultural and Scientific Affairs in London.
http://www.nae.org.uk/exhibition/juan-delgado-altered-landscapes/124