'2018 Art Trail, powered by Tesla'

"On behalf of Tesla and Unseen it's our great pleasure to inform you that 280A is selected as winner in the '2018 Art Trail, powered by Tesla'!"

We are very pleased to share with you that Unseen Amsterdam 2018, basing their decision on a noticible futuristic and innovative quality from our 280A proposal for the 2018 Art Trail, powered by Tesla, selected our collective as winners out of more than 35 submissions!

As part of the award, they did a documentation from our community in Vienna and we were taking part in the artist talk during Unseen Amsterdam's Open Gallery Night on Saturday 22nd of September in the Tesla Store in Amsterdam.

280A at Unseen Amsterdam's CO-OP

CO-OP is the space offered by Unseen Amsterdam 2018 for artists collectives in order to showcase their work between the 21nd and 23th of September.

As said by them "this new element to Unseen’s programme puts the artists first and has been set up to stimulate collaborations between artists, as well as approaching the art commerce in novel and unconventional ways to create more sustainable careers for collectives."

Presenting an installation created in collaboration within 12 or their artists, 280A proposal for Unseen Amsterdam's CO-OP deals with the significance of the collective in times of progressive individualization, virtualization and ongoing fragmentation, but also with the idea of intensity in arts and culture. Especially for this occasion, we created a series of merged images that reflect on questions of the authorship of individual artistic production, the classical representation of individual artworks and the role of curatorial practice.

The artists submitted photographs engaging with the topic of emotionality and sentimentality against the backdrop of virtualization and the reduction to surfaces. In a second step we asked them to re-arrange the submitted material of the whole group to layered collages following the principle of “image content against individual authorship”. In the process of putting them together, the individual positions merge into the collective representation. By doing this, we asked how emotionally affected the artists are by trading their distinctive positions for a collective statement, particularly in regard to the sentimental value of the individual works. What does the desire for symbiosis mean in times where all our data (images, texts etc.) is stored in a virtual cloud joining millions of other people’s data, where instagram profiles reflect the attempt to stage a life of high intensity, but fail and still seem “flat”? In times, where “feeling alive” means posting a picture that makes your followers believe your life is full of intense experiences. Maybe only by giving up your individuality for the group, real intensity can develop, referring to a Dionysian ecstatic experience.

This overload, though, gets an antithesis in the center of the space: A 2x1x3,5 meter curtain shaft which houses a water bed inside. With the sentence “NOW THERE SHOULD BE VISUAL SILENCE” the visitor is invited to enter this little room to experience a break from the multiple sensory impressions and the visual overload of an artfair. A space for visual silence, an existential void. In this void, deprived of visual senses, the visitor can - white floating on the water bed - listen to an meditative audio talking about the idea of floating in a visual cloud and merging with a photographic idea of collective authorship.

Participating artists:

Martin Bollati, Cihad Caner, Dorotka Kaczmarek, Claudia Kraus, Christiane Peschek, Philipp Pess, Linn Phyllis Seeger, Michaela Putz, Claudio Reis, Apostolos Zerdevas and Magdalena Zoledz.

Thanks to our partners and sponsors:

SENTIMENTAL DEFENSE: Book launch event in Vienna

Third book release by 280A Artspace on May 18th at Mirakel.

We are happy to invite you to the launch of our third publication “SENTIMENTAL DEFENSE” on May 18th, 9pm at Mirakel Bar (Alser Straße 18, 1090 Vienna). This publication is the result of a 10-days artist retreat which took place in the French town of Cassis featuring 8 international artists from our collective.

We will start the evening with a presentation of the publication. Afterwards, a series of performances held by some of the represented artists will guide through the evening and will lead to an after-party with music and drinks.

Following their latest publications “Liquid Landscaped” and “Transforming memories”, the symposium held in France allowed the participants to create new material focused on the theme of sentimentality or emotionality. Leaving in its final curated work a wider spectrum for interpretation, the publication offers the possibility of returning to the intuitive feeling, be in art and/or society is open, even to our own.

“I think the mixed group, in nationality and in relation to the image sense, was quite interesting and proposed a wide debate over the contemporary relation to photography.” - Argentinean artist Martin Bollati, represented by Galería Cero in Madrid; participant

With a careful edition of the artists’ works and concepts, “SENTIMENTAL DEFENSE” ends up being a complete and cohesive piece with a complex dialog. It takes us on a journey of deconstructed and split visuals and emotions in relation towards our connected lives to a virtual world, through a path of assemble-like imagery that makes us reflect on the limits on extremes and the impact they may have in our feelings and, therefore, in everything around and in ourselves.

Participating artists:

Martin Bollati, Cihad Caner, Christiane Peschek, Philipp Pess, Linn Phyllis Seeger, Gianna Prein, Michaela Putz and Magdalena Zoledz.

Collaboration partners:

Forum Culturel Autrichien, Österreichische Botschaft Lissabon, Bildrecht GmbH, Ruby Marie Hotel, LeChassis, Mondriaan Fund and CBK R’DAM