Iterations

Sabrina Amrani presents Iterations, the second solo exhibition by Indian artist UBIK at the gallery. In this new body of work, conceived as an installative environment rather than a catalog of objects, the artist is critically looking at the conditions underlying our current modes of cultural production, and examining the dichotomy between commodities and cultural objects at the heart of the contemporary. What is the difference between an object, a product, and its environment? And should these differences be abolished, does this render the object of art real or merely gestural? What is matter-of-factly, a real object? 
 

An iteration denotes the procedure in which the repetition of a sequence of operations yields results successively closer to a desired target, or the repetition of a sequence of instructions until a certain condition is finally met. In UBIK’s exhibition, conversely, iterations are a series of processes and mediations that occur between objects, materials and means, in order to approximate this condition where works of art desire to become commodities but at the same time resist this posture by becoming objects of art.
 

While drawing inspiration from a close reading of Boris Groys’ ‘Politics of Installation’, where Groys attempts to take on the complex relationship between artist and curator as the central conflict between forms of authority and value within the contemporary, UBIK is looking at something else: If these diverging forms of aesthetic authority affect the ontological status of artworks as either objects or commodities, what is the by-product of this relationship? How does the art object become present while yet being conditioned by the validation of various, often conflicting publics?  

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The exhibition is part of APERTURA, the Madrid Gallery Weekend, that takes place 10 to 12 September 2015 and is organized by ArteMadrid, the Madrid Gallery Association.