Oli Sorenson

Art.

Music.

Text.

Oli Sorenson
Re-Made in China (Fontana / Gauguin Mashup)
Slashes and commissioned oil on canvas
100x76cm (118x94cm with frame)
2016

Exhibition: 16 June - 03 July, 2016

POPOP Gallery // Belgo Bldg.

372 Ste-Catherine West // Suite 442

Montréal - Canada - H3B 1A2

Vernissage: Thursday, 23 June, 5-8pm

Performance - 7pm

Opening Hours: Wednesday-Sunday 12–7pm

For his new mashup series entitled "Re-Made in China," Oli Sorenson re-enacts Lucio Fontana’s incisions onto copies of some of the world’s most expensive masterpieces. The artist bypasses Walter Benjamin’s trope on mechanical reproduction by commissioning hand-made duplicates from artisans in China. The ensuing oil paintings serve as receptacles for Sorenson and his instrument, the scalpel. Slashing strokes instead of brush strokes rule this gesture to cut the Gordian knot of planar aesthetics and disrupt the integrity of Western canonical images.

The world premiere of the performance "Re-Made in China" is delivered this coming June 23 onto a selection of works already embedded in twentieth century art history. To this end, the slits traversing such copies are not intended to disfigure authentic masterpieces as much as to point out the power relations entailed between unique originals and their ubiquitous reproductions. Especially since the emergence of digital devices, institutionalized works of art from diverse times and places appear continually updated by their omnipresence online. Sorenson responds to this condition by reinstating some of these works in the field of contemporary art by smearing the threshold between modes of production, reproduction and destruction.

The artist here pursues an approach initiated with his "Video Pistoletto" series to transfer the gestures of established artist upon new materials. Following his residency at La Bande Vidéo, Sorenson showed "Video Pistoletto" simultaneously at Nuit Blanche Québec and the Pan-Canadian Media Arts Summit. This work is now on display in the front window of Manif d'art de Québec until July 31 [manifdart.org/ labandevideo.com].

Born in Los Angeles, Oli Sorenson lived and worked in London between 1999 and 2010. His work has been exhibited in multiple contexts: Galerie Trois Points and Agence TOPO (Montréal), Nuit Blanche Montréal, Angell Gallery (Toronto), FILE (Sao Paulo), Dokfest (Kassel), World Art Museum (Beijing), Glitch Gallery (Boston), ZKM (Karlsruhe), ISEA (Helsinki and Nagoya). He is based in Montréal, Canada since 2010.

Media contact: Emmanuel Galland

514.452.7302 // emmanuelgalland@hotmail.com

Images & CV available upon request