SPRING/BREAK- GROUP ART SHOW SPENT IN SOHO SCHOOL HOUSE

SPRING/BREAK- GROUP ART SHOW SPENT IN SOHO SCHOOL HOUSE

“Wanted for Being,” Installation, 2012, Joseph Jagos and Chris Puidokas

The theme of this Art Show- a part of Armory Arts Week- is “Apocalist: What is the end and is it nigh and what comes then and what was it that made it so?” The group exhibit was ambitious and took over the enormous Old School on Mott Street in Soho, NY. 23 curators showed work by more than 60 artists, “listing the sense of disorder, celebration, or disdain generated by real or invented global or personal assumptions of calamity.” But not all of the artwork focused on the bleak future, world’s end and despair-

In addition to some doom-and-gloom installations, many artists seized upon the Judgment Day theme to imagine utopian futures. Joseph Jagos and Chris Puidokas created an installation titled “Wanted for Being” (2012) — and curated by Tom Weinrich — which featured fluorescent lighting, a tipi-shaped structure made of one-way mirror panels, televisions, and incubator-like glass structures in which human hair seemed to grow from moss. This imagined future of natural and technological hybridity was one of this rewarding fair’s most elaborate installations. -via ARTINFO

According to the artists’ statement found in the installation room, WANTED FOR BEING can be explained as,

…A surrealist futurist landscape based around the idea of social network absorption. A new collective mass in solid state matter has evolved our natural environment due to accumulation of the self mirrored image. Biological based plants now produce shells of plastic and roots of synthetic hair. The flora of this environment now absorbs your movements such as a web cookie would and re-emits them as a warm, full and encompassing sound. The should let’s us know we are being observed then lulled to comfort and convenience by our movements.”

Joseph Jagos is a Michigan native, now residing in Brooklyn as an artist and curator. Jagos is part of the PLAYGROUND DETROIT team, lending his artistic expertise to our creative platform. PLAYGROUND DETROIT interviewed him about being part of the show and his background.

PD: How did you become involved in the SPRING/BREAK group show?

JJ: I was invited by Tom Weinrich of Interstate Projects to be part of the show.

PD: What was your favorite work from the group show, aside from yours?

JJ: I really liked the Envoy Enterprises Desi Santiago, which were Giant inflatable pieces.

PD: What themes do you explore in your work generally?

JJ: My work explores spatial relationships in societal personalities…  I like landscape architecture too.

PD: Do you think being a Michigan native and previously working in the Detroit art scene influences your artwork?

JJ: I currently work in New York, but in the past I lived and worked in the Detroit art scene.  Detroit influenced my work in the way that I had more space and freedom there.  Now that I have less space, I want to create my own sense of freedom- my own environment.  I want, and do this with my installations as much as possible to sense the freedom of my lesser space.  Basically, I have learned not to take space for granted.  In Detroit, you do take space for granted because there is so much of it, but when you cannot do that anymore, you want what space you possess to be exactly how you want it.

Check out the live performance during the installation. The music and sounds cause the entire space to pulsate with lights in an organic light and sound symphony.

Wanted for being spring break art show performance from JOE JAGOS on Vimeo.

 

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