#LAYERS. Contemporary Art in the Digital Era

18 April - 26 May 2018

Exhibitions

About
Practical Info
Media Gallery
Credits

An exhibition by Link Art Center

#LAYERS presents creations by 15 contemporary Italian artists, who reflect in their work on the influence of the Internet and the digitisation of our society.

Since the nineties technology has opened new avenues for creativity and democratized the creation and distribution of all kinds of digital media. This democratization poses new challenges to art. How do artists engage with the social and cultural transformations introduced by the web? How do they relate to big data, the cloud, the end of privacy, generative processes, the corruption of digital data, endless scrolling and everything that concerns our online lives?

The title of the exhibition, #LAYERS, refers to the different ways in which digital complexity manifests itself in the works presented: the distinction between code and interface in generative art and glitch art; the creative use of social media; the stratification of different timeframes in the archives of digital memory; the distinction between public and private, material and immaterial, visible and invisible.

#LAYERS was first presented in fall 2016 in the Spazio Contemporania in Brescia, Italy, as part of refresh, an ongoing investigation by curator Fabio Paris and producer Link Art Center of Italian contemporary art that tackles the themes, languages, and forms that have emerged during the digital turn of the last twenty years. In Brussels Link Art Center presents refresh 02, the second edition of a series of group exhibitions showing recent work by Italian artists of different generations.

During the renovation works at the Koolmijnenkaai 30 Quai des Charbonnages in preparation of the opening of a new centre in 2019, iMAL organises its activities at external locations. This exhibition will be presented in the Machines Room of La Raffinerie / Charleroi Danse, from 18 April to 26 May 2018.
The choice of La Raffinerie (Plan K), a mythical place of the 70's and 80's, is an homage to the first Belgian International Festival of Electronic Music, Video and Computer Art which happened there in 1981 (Didier Debril's pdf archive here).

ARTISTS

Marco Cadioli, Alessandro Capozzo, Pier Giorgio De Pinto, Luca Grillo, IOCOSE, Kamilia Kard, Eva & Franco Mattes, Marco Mendeni, Martina Menegon, Filippo Minelli, Simone Monsi, Alice Palamenghi, Guido Segni, Emilio Vavarella, Carlo Zanni

PROGRAMME

Opening
Wednesday 18 April, 18:30 - 22:00

Exhibition
19 April - 26 May, Wed-Sat, 13:00-18:00
+ Art Brussels weekend, on 21 & 22 April

Art Brussels debate "Ways beyond the post-Internet"
Friday 20 April, 16:30 - 18:00, at Art Brussels
With Yves Bernard (BE, curator), Peter Beyls (BE, artist), Josephine Bosma (NL, net art theorist), Constant Dullaart (NL, artist), Valérie Hasson-Benillouche (FR, Gallery Charlot), Hampus Lindwall (SE/BE, art collector), Fabio Paris (IT, curator), Domenico Quaranta (IT, curator, art critic and theorist), Carlo Zanni (IT, artist).