Sergio Bromberg
11th March - 18th March 2011
Opening Reception - Friday 11th February
Time and Place TBC
Elbow Gallery is delighted to announce our second solo show featuring
the effervescent work by Mexican artist Sergio Bromberg. Bromberg’s work poses questions about
the politics of spectatorship and offers a fascinating glimpse into the world
of voyeurism, surveillance, hierarchy and power.
Through performative installations working within the realm of involuntary relational art, Bromberg uses his practice as a source to question the ideas of interpersonal voyeurism as he alienates the viewer through a determined psychological interaction.
Bromberg’s installation promises to be the most intrusive art exhibition Elbow Gallery has ever held. His show consists of a micro spy camera located within the inch-squared gallery as he presents an artwork to be judged on the basis of the inter-human relations through a monumental obstruction of the physical metabolic structure.
The camera will be recording during the opening hours of the gallery, where it will penetrate the souls of the viewer, stripping them naked of any choices or democracy, the footage captured and kept by the artist to use at his own discretion.
The show creates moments of sociability, enforced by the object of the camera, producing sociability. The exhibition suggests that, as a society, we have always been voyeurs – it is just that technology now makes it so much easier. This notion is implicated further since the footage captured during the show will be available to view at www.elbowGbromberg.com. Both the willing and unwilling participants are invited to access the webpage with a password, provided by the gallery, in order to see footage of themselves, other participants, and the general happenings during the galleries opening hours.
Bomberg’s work is asking the viewer to take a critical look at the issues surrounding voyeurism and surveillance, raising questions about power, ownership and boundaries, while bringing up serious moral questions about who’s looking, how they’re looking and why they’re looking.
While the viewer is an unwilling participant, they are faced with the conundrum of effectively being forced into being captured on film, in order to view the installation within the gallery space, offering a intriguing glance at the psychological actions an art piece can produce and how an artist can effect the viewers psyche through the project infiltrating them without their explicit consent.
Bromberg is interested in human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private gallery space. Given the nature of the Elbow Gallery, he is able to be more interactive allowing the opportunity for the artwork to more easily create and develop a social environment in which people come together to participate in a shared activity where they can experience the allure of participation.
We are delighted to have Bromberg show at the Elbow Gallery as his work further questions our own inquiries of the boundaries between the artist and the gallery space. Due to this the pairing of the Elbow Gallery and Bromberg seemed both organic and kinetic. We seeks to question where the art is and who is the author – the artist or the human where the gallery is located. Bromberg takes this quandary and turns it on its head.
He provides a work that overrides the gallery walls, and takes back authenticity of the work from the human elbow. Where, with an internal show, the Elbow and its actions can claim author of the work, Bromberg reclaims them, in essence, controlling the gallery and it’s behavior. With the camera filming during opening hours, the galleries activities are constantly influenced by Bromberg, adding another layer of power and virile supremacy. With this the spectator is never sure if the show's premise is that all artists are equal as voyeurs or all voyeurs are equal as artists.
Bromberg questions the assumption that art institutions, in the sense of organizational infrastructure, are the most productive or appropriate form of institutionality. His practice takes as its theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than this independent and private space. The work produces intersubjective encounters, through which, meaning is elaborated collectively, where he considers interhuman exchange an aesthetic object in and of itself.
Bromberg’s artwork is open-ended and interactive, taking place in time and space and creating interactive communicative experiences and intersubjective encounters in which meaning is elaborated collectively. The artist is no longer at the centre, no longer the soul creator. Instead Bromberg is the catalyst, the puppet master, framing a point of consideration, for the viewer to respond too.
This is an interest of Bromberg’s as he seeks to emphasize process, performativity, openness, social contexts, transitivity and the production of dialogue over the closure of traditional modernist objecthood, visuality and hyper-individualism.
Bromberg presents a shocking, illuminating and witty perspective on the boundaries we fit into. The issues raised are particularly relevant, with debates raging on the rights of individuals and the increasing use of surveillance. His show confronts these issues and their implications head-on and the Elbow Gallery is honored to be part of the experience of Bromberg’s illusions of grandeur that alternate between comedic brilliance and virulent hate.
Through performative installations working within the realm of involuntary relational art, Bromberg uses his practice as a source to question the ideas of interpersonal voyeurism as he alienates the viewer through a determined psychological interaction.
Bromberg’s installation promises to be the most intrusive art exhibition Elbow Gallery has ever held. His show consists of a micro spy camera located within the inch-squared gallery as he presents an artwork to be judged on the basis of the inter-human relations through a monumental obstruction of the physical metabolic structure.
The camera will be recording during the opening hours of the gallery, where it will penetrate the souls of the viewer, stripping them naked of any choices or democracy, the footage captured and kept by the artist to use at his own discretion.
The show creates moments of sociability, enforced by the object of the camera, producing sociability. The exhibition suggests that, as a society, we have always been voyeurs – it is just that technology now makes it so much easier. This notion is implicated further since the footage captured during the show will be available to view at www.elbowGbromberg.com. Both the willing and unwilling participants are invited to access the webpage with a password, provided by the gallery, in order to see footage of themselves, other participants, and the general happenings during the galleries opening hours.
Bomberg’s work is asking the viewer to take a critical look at the issues surrounding voyeurism and surveillance, raising questions about power, ownership and boundaries, while bringing up serious moral questions about who’s looking, how they’re looking and why they’re looking.
While the viewer is an unwilling participant, they are faced with the conundrum of effectively being forced into being captured on film, in order to view the installation within the gallery space, offering a intriguing glance at the psychological actions an art piece can produce and how an artist can effect the viewers psyche through the project infiltrating them without their explicit consent.
Bromberg is interested in human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private gallery space. Given the nature of the Elbow Gallery, he is able to be more interactive allowing the opportunity for the artwork to more easily create and develop a social environment in which people come together to participate in a shared activity where they can experience the allure of participation.
We are delighted to have Bromberg show at the Elbow Gallery as his work further questions our own inquiries of the boundaries between the artist and the gallery space. Due to this the pairing of the Elbow Gallery and Bromberg seemed both organic and kinetic. We seeks to question where the art is and who is the author – the artist or the human where the gallery is located. Bromberg takes this quandary and turns it on its head.
He provides a work that overrides the gallery walls, and takes back authenticity of the work from the human elbow. Where, with an internal show, the Elbow and its actions can claim author of the work, Bromberg reclaims them, in essence, controlling the gallery and it’s behavior. With the camera filming during opening hours, the galleries activities are constantly influenced by Bromberg, adding another layer of power and virile supremacy. With this the spectator is never sure if the show's premise is that all artists are equal as voyeurs or all voyeurs are equal as artists.
Bromberg questions the assumption that art institutions, in the sense of organizational infrastructure, are the most productive or appropriate form of institutionality. His practice takes as its theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than this independent and private space. The work produces intersubjective encounters, through which, meaning is elaborated collectively, where he considers interhuman exchange an aesthetic object in and of itself.
Bromberg’s artwork is open-ended and interactive, taking place in time and space and creating interactive communicative experiences and intersubjective encounters in which meaning is elaborated collectively. The artist is no longer at the centre, no longer the soul creator. Instead Bromberg is the catalyst, the puppet master, framing a point of consideration, for the viewer to respond too.
This is an interest of Bromberg’s as he seeks to emphasize process, performativity, openness, social contexts, transitivity and the production of dialogue over the closure of traditional modernist objecthood, visuality and hyper-individualism.
Bromberg presents a shocking, illuminating and witty perspective on the boundaries we fit into. The issues raised are particularly relevant, with debates raging on the rights of individuals and the increasing use of surveillance. His show confronts these issues and their implications head-on and the Elbow Gallery is honored to be part of the experience of Bromberg’s illusions of grandeur that alternate between comedic brilliance and virulent hate.