Aideen Barry
Plait of Destiny, 2023
LOGLINE
Images created with a motion design software, inspired by the Ancient Greeks mythologies about the Graeae who woven the thread of life
Computer generated image
Single Channel HD video with Sound
2 min
Edition of 5 + 2 A.P.
Courtesy of Isabel Hurley Gallery and the artist
Three plaits of the Morrigan’s Hair morph and transform into a rope that coils and solidifies in form before unravelling to the strands again. Inspired by stories from the Irish Folk Archive at University College Dublin the artist explored the depictions of the Morrigan who Barry sees as an Irish manifestation of the Graeae or perhaps Moiri of Antiquity. The Fates like the Morrigan were a troika of three females, in antiquity they held a jurisdiction over birth, life and eventual death. They spin a thread, hold it and cut it. In other interpretations of these three they share an eye-ball that they can see into the future with, in Irish antiquity they spin their hair into forms to cause trouble.
They are a somatic monstrous female, made up of different parts that metamorphosize into something other. In these recent works Barry uses cutting edge animation technologies to manifest these forms. Barry takes a surface of one living matter and weaves it together to manifest another, a kind of Frankenstein-ation process of sorts that can make a new language out of one that exists in the natural world hyper realised in the digital world.
Lois Patiño
El sembrador de estrellas (The Sower of Stars), 2022
World premiere: Berlinale short film competition. // * Selected as candidate for the
Berlinale for the European Film Awards.
LOGLINE
A dreamlike and spiritual journey through the hypnotic nocturnal universe of Tokyo.
SYNOPSIS
Distant lights draw the city. Shining ships arrive with sleeping people and the night turns liquid.
The sower of stars wakes them up and they travel through the city, talking about this and that, while saying goodbye to everything.
Experimental Short film
HD / color / audio
Recorded in Tokyo
25 min
Edition of 5 + A.P.
Courtesy of Isabel Hurley Gallery and the artist
Tokyo at night is dazzling, a fantasy of hypnotizing lights. Observed with distance and stillness, if you let yourself be carried away by them, you can find a meditative atmosphere there. The first thing the artist tried to capture was this peaceful feeling, hidden within the vertigo of a megalopolis like Tokyo.
He worked on the image with two plastic references that emerged very quickly: Zen landscape painting -from where I could underline the idea of emptiness and silence- and the cyberpunk aesthetics of films like Blade Runner -to build futuristic neon architectures by superimposing planes-.
Patiño is always interested in the limbo space between life and death, imaginary and real, where the borders between both blur to make the spectral and dreamlike emerge. I wanted the story to pass through this ideas, giving shape to it from a dialogue of disembodied voices. Voices that cross the city-limbo while being both outside and inside the image, as a kind of depersonalization.
Aideen,Barry, Cork (IE) 1980. Her work encompasses a vast range of disciplines and subjects, including domestic labour, environmental changes, classism, intersectionality, and human vulnerability as a way to consider invisible and sinister systems. Her means of expression are interchangeable, incorporating performance, sculpture, film, text and experimental lens based media.
Her work is part of major collections and has been exhibited in museums such as: INMA, Dublin (IE); The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (IE); Trinity College Gallery, Dublin (IE); Salzburg Kunstverein (AT); Matucana 100, Santiago (CL);The Katzen Center, Washington (US); Moderna Museett, Stockholm (SE); CAC Malaga (SP), The National Gallery of Ireland (IE); OMI: New York (US); Banff Centre (CA); Elephant Gallery, London (UK); The Whitaker Museum (UK); Musée des Beaux Arts, Lyon (FR); Louise T. Blouin Institute, London (UK); Artscene Shanghai (CN); MACO, Oaxaca (MX); or BAC Geneva (CH).
Lois Patiño is a filmmaker and artist born in Vigo (SP), 1983. His films have been shown at film festivals such as Cannes (FR), Berlinale (DE), Locarno (CH), Toronto (CA), Rotterdam (NL), New York (US), Viennale (AT), IDFA, Cinema du rèel, Oberhausen (DE), Clermont-Ferrand (FR) His films and video installations have been seen in art centers such as MoMA (US), Centre Pompidou (FR) , MACBA (ES), CCCB, (ES) Casa Encendida (ES) or in art fairs such as ARCO (ES), Estampa (ES), SWAB (ES), Paris Photo (FR), Photo London (UK), Unseen, Amsterdam (NL) or the Aichi Triennale (JP).
Samsara (2023 – Berlinale – Encounters / Special Jury Award), Lúa vermella (2020 – Berlinale Forum) and Costa da morte (2013 – Locarno / Best Emerging Director Award) are his three feature films to date.
His last two short films: Sycorax (2021) and El sembrador de estrellas (2022) have premiered in the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight and in the Official Section of the Berlinale, respectively, receiving an award at the latter festival.
Opened in 2007, since its inception the gallery´s mision has been promoting contemporary art and collecting, acting as an open forum for the debate on the new representation strategies as well as on the various contemporary manifestations. The gallery´s mission is seriously commited with the education in values related with all the most sensible issues, due to social, politics or religious intolerances, and in our relationship with the enviroment.
The gallery has hosted almost 90 exhibitions in its own phisycal space, together with others in collaboration with commercial and institutional ones, editing catalogues every season, as single editor or with partners…
Facing the fundamental task of giving response to the nowadays challenges, in 2022 the gallery opened two new sections, exclusively online: Project Video and Virtual Space. The gallery has attended some major art fairs such as Artissima, Paris Photo; Zona MACO; ARCO, Estampa, Volta NY, Pulse NY or Madrid Photo.