A ‘carnival for the visual senses’ sounds just the thing to help us emerge from the monotone tedium of the Old Normal and into the Brave New World.
As we slowly creep into the New Normal, what better than an art exhibition that not only takes a second stab at happening after being postponed through Covid closures, but that also explores a new, improved sense of reality – a vivid, pop-art world that represents an improvement on what has gone before – a modern, surreal view of the world that is a lot better than the grim, divisive existence that we’ve all lived through for too long.
Absolutely Augmented Reality is a collaboration between American filmmaker, writer and artist Kuzma Vostrikov together with Chinese multimedia artist Ajuan Song, and explores the point at which art and photography, reality and surreality collide in a playful dream world of dayglo colours and off-kilter, severed normality that brings to mind the work of the great creatives of the 20th century while offering a new take on old explorations of individuality.
To quote the artists:
“We are prisoners of our imagination and our circumstances. The work selected for this exhibition in its own way an image of our quarantine. More than just photography, our work is an investigation into metaphysics which creates a sense of exploration and melancholic intrigue. Absolutely Augmented Reality is more like an existential experiment, a collection of visually poetic statistics on the subject reflecting on the circumstances of the observed object. We’re photo-existentialists practicing anthropological symbolism.”
We live in a world where the bleak has become normalised, misery celebrated and conformity demanded by ever more shrill voices. It’s a monochrome existence where a thudding dullness is demanded by those who think they know what is good for us. But that’s the Old Normal, right? We have the opportunity for change, and surely the New Normal offers the chance to throw away the tedium of plodding reality and instead embrace the weird once again. This exhibition looks like a much-needed rejection of a reality that we have all thoroughly worn out, mixing photography, art, fashion and the frivolous luridness of pop culture in a much-needed splash of indulgence.
The Absolutely Augmented Reality exhibition takes place at the Hoxton 253 Art Project Space in London between the 5th and 29th of June 2021. Well worth breaking hibernation for.
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