I O P :: Dovble Trovble

DOVBLE TROVBLE

We have to admit, we spend a lot of time on the Internet – maybe too much. But a project such as DOVBLE TROVBLE couldn't exist if we didn’t collect images, update our different websites and blogs, and check new things every day. We suspect that a lot of artists do the same!

DOVBLE TROVBLE is an exhibition existing across two platforms: a physical one at CCA and also at www.archives.itsourplayground.com a website dedicated to online curation that we have run for almost two years. Rather than simply using the Internet to show photographic documentation of work exhibited in the gallery, there will be original works in both exhibition spaces, from 3D sculpture to JPEG, installation to GIF.

Some artists spend more time polishing their online visual identity than painting, cutting wood or any other artistic activity. The brain doesn’t have a left and a right hemisphere so much as an Internet and a reality one. The point is to know which one is on the left.

What we have noticed in recent years with the proliferation of image blogs and the daily surfing of the Internet, is that it has been widely acknowledged that a good picture is worth more than a good piece. Assuming that the Internet is the largest database of artworks, the online documentation of contemporary art has become essential to its very existence – without it, there is a tendency toward obsolescence.

The show is about how the influence of passive and active online activities changes the usual practice of the artists, how the Internet brings a hybrid status to their pieces. For example, it is impressive to see how Google Images has had a strong impact on a young generation of artists. Some artists will run several more or less private blogs at the same time, others will build a practice on this digital aesthetic.

The exhibition is not looking at ‘Internet artists’ – an idea that was glorified during the ‘90s. What DOVBLE TROVBLE wants to find out is the relationship artists have with the Internet on a daily basis.

The network appears as a new singular medium, not only as a subject or a tool. It is never the subject of the pieces on show. Internet is everywhere!

But the Internet has a fragile and weak aspect too, a lot of constraints such as being dependent on a provider or platform. This is maybe the reason why we can see, not only in this show but also on a lot of blogs, all those anachronical references to the ‘safe values’ of Ancient Greece, Roman Antiquity or ancestral techniques (ceramic, mosaic, stone carving...). These references are also responsible for the spelling of DOVBLE TROVBLE - as a Latin inscription we could have discovered, roughly etched at the back of a very old and dusty hard drive.

Camille Le Houezec & Joey Villemont

Web programmation : Thibaut Villemont
Wallpaper : Ciara Phillips