Gallery Layout / Utopian presence

Utopian presence is an exhibition taking the fears and subconscious desires of society as a starting point for confronting viewers with impossibilities of ethical choices, thereby engaging in a form of "social psychoanalysis." Comprising 8 large-scale video installations, 5 mixed-media installations based on the materiality speculation of this world; the show examines utopia — as a place that does not exist while many of its aspects already manifest in the reality we inhabit — in the context of contemporary society, beliefs, and life. The works form a chaotic presence of our digital screen life throwing the viewers into a heavy visual movement environment that is connected and separates the attention intentionally, interrupting and interfering with each other. The arrangements of the works can be perceived in different ways and the “journey of the viewer” might be looped. All the artists have developed concepts of the alternative worlds exploring technological, human, nature, AI extensions, and manipulation with the borders of real-life and possible near-future outcomes. AES+F irony on the human society followed by biological speculations of Theo Triantafyllidis and Aljoscha, which pre encountered by the technological utopian ideas of Egor Kraft, Peter Burr, Tega Brain, Julian Oliver, and Bengt Sjölén, Nikita Diakur, and Howie Lee. At the beginning of the exhibition Troika’s “No Sound of Water” form the ecosystem fiction of utopian presence of this world creating the overall aura to the exhibition. The salt must unite all pieces together by traveling on the floor by the footsteps of the visitors.