CHROMATIC, DYNAMIC… STRESS!

Closing Spotify, closing Instagram.
Come on, let’s go.

LA BIBI + REUS presents the exhibition CHROMATIC DYNAMIC…STRESS!, featuring the work of Filippo Cegani, Lucas Dupuy, Julius Hofmann, Hank Reavis, and Ahn Tae Won. The project is conceived as a continuation of Better Call Mark, an exhibition presented last year around the same time during Art Palma Summer. Adopting the logic of the hyperlink, both exhibitions are connected to present ultra-contemporary forms of representation—highly influenced by digital culture in all its facets: from video games, 2D and 3D technology experiments, and the random aesthetics of the internet, to the painterly adoption of digital editing strategies.

The boundaries between the real, the fictional, and the digital collapse, placing us in a chaotic, blurred, and imprecise scenario, where our subjectivity merges with algorithms that predict our tastes and future needs. This new generation of artists inserts itself into a cyber-aesthetic stream, one that differs from the iconography we used to know—futuristic, alien, metallic, hyper-technological, physical. Now everything is much more domestic, fluid, codified, changeable, algorithmic, random, blending—in this case—with analog residues like painting. These artists continue to use the medium as a reminder of reality, while their minds and bodies are being fed by blue light.

Pixelated, digitally-edited cats are Ahn Tae Won’s unmistakable signature. As if playing a copy-cut-paste game, he transfers the fragmented body of his cat directly from the screen onto the canvas. In a similar spirit, but through a more archaic visualisation, Julius Hofmann presents us with angular DJs at an apocalyptic rave or a premonitory and unsettling scene in Megalodón, all rendered through a chromatic prism of greys, blacks, and—above all—lavenders.

This modus operandi—where elements are transferred to the canvas without harmonic relation, like cut-out objects in a “cyber-collage”—is characteristic of Filippo Cegani’s work. In his case, though, the post-digital aspect functions more like a filter through which personal experiences are processed: his traumas, fears, or thoughts. The digital is not the core concept here, as this aesthetic position is already an inherent part of the self. It is the filter through which the artist experiences daily life and being in the world.

Anonymity, storage, image banks, change, appropriation—these are all concepts often tagged onto Hank Reavis’ work. His paintings exemplify the new visual strategies born on the web: a space of tireless image production.
Baby, don’t overthink it, don’t overthink it (it’s just my thing)
Don’t overthink it, don’t overthink it, don’t overthink it, it’s just my thing
Don’t overthink it, don’t overthink it, don’t overthink it, it’s just my thing
Don’t overthink it, don’t overthink it, don’t overthink it, don’t—

And finally, within the chaos, we glimpse a search, introspection, and a representation of the essential. We shed the visual oversaturation and arrive at the minimum: the meaning of form, of language. Lucas Dupuy embarks on this investigation through a subtle digital imaginary in harmony with natural and architectural shapes. Though not everything is calm—Dupuy’s works still retain a certain anxious expression of form, like power cables or neural connections buzzing at full capacity.

Nice!
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