work | H

A.T.W.W.N.S.

And The World Will Naturally Settle (Galerie Crone, Vienna 2022)
[ Antropofagia paintings | Without Desire we shall be found | Antropofagia Drawings | Poem Works]
TRANSLATION

TRANSLATION [ 22.5.19—30.6.19 — GAGPROJECTS] works list: POEM FOR USELESSNESS, 2019, enamel paint on 11 plywood forms. POST TRAUMA BRANCUSI HEAD, 2019, white patina bronze and granite. ONE THING DESTROYES ANOTHER, 2019, enamel paint on 4 plywood forms. SHADOWS RAIN I, 2019, enamel paint on paper. SHADOWS RAIN II, 2019, enamel paint on paper. BEGINNING OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, glass and black granite. DISFIGURING THE MEANING OF ESSENCE, 2019, graphite on paper, 12 drawings. POEM (TESTING TOLERANCE), 2019, digital video, 2min loop.

[exhibition text] The uselessness of art redeems us humans, it is a space opposite, a counter-production that we need to keep interpreting and building, ideally in the most neutral way possible. Art is not about us, it is about all. Beyond any speculation I believe that the reason our world needs art is because we perceive a notion of complete equality and equanimity that exists only in the fundamental absolute power of art. We need art because it affects us, the experience damages us while simultaneously helping us regain trust in a condition that seems to avoid us. Our temporality, stubbornness, personal views, the excesses of added values; art doesn’t care for these, it attacks and erodes them, becoming relevant to us. Because the encounter with art humbles us, we must care for it. Working on art projects stands not as an escape nor a crusade, but perhaps as a poetic lament and an attempt at translating into tangible that unfathomable space. From our fragmented reality, surviving all accidents of being, I keep striving to bring versions of this poetry into the world, translations that remain always imperfect and incomplete, but are done with as much fidelity as possible. This exhibition is one version of this, including works produced with broken, discarded and found materials; surviving traumatic transformations these are presented again heroic, as poetic figures in their regenerated structures, symbolic of the fluid nature of attested conceptions, or what is original.

Notes on the un/reasons for Poem for Uselessness
words come from sound, sound comes from wisdom, wisdom comes from emptiness, deep relaxation. (extract from 'Welcoming the Flowers', John Giorno)
An accident, without sound, extracted from time and expanded, paused, a representation of the other, outside of perspectives, a fictional invisible work that helps illuminate the identification of ourselves, outside of ourselves. An eternal accident where negotiations, of forms and being, constantly take place and all preconceived plans are render useless. A moment of complexity in front of us, larger than us, a moment of liberation. In this prompt moment of silence, pure poetry emerging, a form that makes no sense and has no direct use, but its elegance renders everything right. Constant changes, the lack of definition of the moment - this fluidity of image is what makes the experience functional.A multiple of translations, accurate or not, particle of a totality, contradicting any conscious assertion of origin, or the original; meanings are in vain, no rules capable of supporting anyone’s confusion. When pleasure is not the target, humility and humor are the only alternatives. The accident, a cut in the regularity of our lives, were our world and that of art—and philosophy and existence itself—collide and penetrate each other and energy is transferred through. A cut that is powerful enough to consume us, to hypnotize us away from the tragedy of common life and into a universe more complete. A cut, broken units, multiplicity, totality, the sound of emptiness, fluidity, unconscious paths, the presence of complete wisdom. The reconfiguring of being, a new sculpting of sorts that changes appearances, while remaining the same and affecting the way we see, understand and accept. The acceptance of the transient of being and that of interpretation and identification, appreciation and delivery of a version of the larger story. That is the task of the work. The broken shards of glass, on which Poem for Uselessness is shaped upon, are shadows of the panes used as bases for the fluid patterns that form a big domain of the paintings. The shards, collected from discarded broken glass, have mostly only acted as contingent spaces for the visuality of the paintings to take form; here, incidental free movements of fluids give way to natural formations that are later selected and processed digitally, before being translated to the canvas by small brushstrokes, in a form of post-digital-decompositionism of sorts, a mechanism that helps me access a semantic of visual primitivism via extremely calculated generative procedures. Poem for Uselessness takes this space of contingency to the foreground, the shards become the space of necessity for the work to take effect. Fluidity is renewed symbolic, visually absent, or fully there to the point of flatness, completeness, or emptiness. Words and characters in the most simple geometrical lettering shapes come into the work as counteract for this primitivism — language as the cultural element, developing and defining reason, floats over the darkness. Text which represents language which represents culture, that is or was part of an intact space and that is now broken, or braking and changing the way we read and understand, playing with our competence in finding sense of multiple translations which out of order make no sense, or perhaps more sense, or simply other sense to that which they intended at the source of origin. The task of the work is to test us in front of those changes, to displace us and restore the aversion of the pain of not knowing, through the poetry and beauty of our own confusion.
TRAGEDY OF EQUALITY [act3] – UNEDITED

KNIFE BATTLE [recorded in Berlin - 2019]
[ camera assistance Linus Müller - b&w still-photography Matthew Thorne ]
TRAGEDY OF EQUALITY [act2] – UNEDITED

video recording (stills) and portrait photography from the 2nd act performance "MUDWRESTLING BATTLE", which took place at GAGPROJECTS, Adelaide, January 2019. 2nd Match: ADELAIDE-BATTLE [ January 2019 - Adelaide] FRAMEWORK > "politics has no objects or issues of its own. Its sole principle, equality, is not peculiar to it and is in no way in itself political. All equality does is lend politics reality in the form of specific cases to inscribe, in the form of litigation, confirmation of the equality at the heart of the police order. " J. Rancier [Disagreement] Engaged in one of the oldest forms of combat, two contenders wrestle against each-other. To neutralize individual status, contenders wore white bodysuits and a white abstract mask, the bodysuit was covered in white mud, which metaphorical transforms the body into territories to be occupied. Using all traditional moves, such as takedowns, joint locks, pins and grappling holds, the competitors battled to overpower each other. As the battle begins, their suits spill mud all around, covering their bodies and making the battle ground slippery, adding danger to the match. The sense of control, of force and space is put out of balance; the role of dominance and subjugation are left not just to the technical knowledge of the fighters, but to chance. Eventually, unable to come clean of the entangle they returned to their resting positions. OUTCOME > The intended forced takeover of the territorial body of the other, leaves no party able to balance and take full control. Both parties end up equally soiled by the force used, restricting any evidence of difference. Through cycles of domination and submission, the action is inconclusive: no one wins, and individual signs are neutralized. Bodies are rendered non-productive, left in a perennial symbiotic tension. SUMMARY > Direct contact battles between two contestants occur in triangular spaces. Physical triangulations reflect the opponent’s respective states of ‘desire’, ‘reality’ and ‘expectation’ within the binary law of domination and subjugation that maintains them, reflecting a global system of desire and fate continuously moving and consuming each-other. As a primal tension structure, a triangulation indicates our existence as products of desire (mother-father-child), as natural bodies integrated in social compromise (political fate), to consume and satisfy production (economic fate), to deal with a contentious existence in a confined occupied space. The competition strive for difference where difference is not allowed to occur. Competitors wear neutral white outfits and abstract “landscape” masks. Referencing classical Greek tragedy, the masks eliminate identity and transform the contenders into anonymous territories, each competing to conquer the opponent. The structure conforms to a territorial battleground where the actions, through infinite repetition, direct towards a sterilization of the external image, where cultural judgment is deprived of its absolute force.
TRAGEDY OF EQUALITY [act1] – UNEDITED

video recording (stills) and portrait photography from the 1st act performance "HEADSHAVINGBATTLE", which took place at void+, Tokyo, June 2018. (video link coming soon...meanwhile https://mailchi.mp/randian-online/head-shaving-battle-tokyo-ariel-hassan-1266533?e=9970712933)
SUMMARY > Direct contact battles between two contestants occur in triangular spaces. The physical triangulations embed each opponent’s respective states of desire, reality and expectation within the binary law of domination and subjugation that maintains them, reflecting a ecosystem of desire and fate continuously moving and consuming each-other. A primal tension structure, a triangulation also indicates our existence as products of desire (mother-father-child), as natural bodies integrated in a social space of compromise (political fate), to consume and satisfy production (economic fate), to deal with a contentious presence in a confined, occupied space. The battles strive for difference where difference is not allowed to occur. Competitors wear neutral white outfits and abstract landscape-masks. Referencing classical Greek tragedy, the masks eliminate identity and transform the contenders into anonymous territories, each intending unsuccessfully to conquer the opponent. The structure conforms to a territorial battleground where the actions, through infinite repetition, direct towards a sterilization of the external image, where cultural judgment is deprived of its absolute force. 1st Match: TOKYO-BATTLE [ June 2018 - Tokyo] FRAMEWORK > What is desired is manifest: a struggle for difference or a violent acceptance of equality. Armed with electric hair clippers, two contenders battled against each-other. To neutralize individual status, contenders wore white overalls and a white abstract mask. Competitors battled to overpower each other, attacking and shaving the head of the other, able only to shave a small amount of hair before their roles were overturned, dominance and subjugation. Eventually, neither contender had any hair left to cut. Bald, they returned to their resting positions. OUTCOME > Hair eliminated and not allowed to grow back. The body is controlled by force, restricting its capacity for pride and difference. Denied its production, hair is hindered from protection or image production (individuality). Through cycles of domination and submission, the action is inconclusive: no one wins, and individual signs are neutralized. Bodies are rendered non-productive, left in a perennial symbiotic tension.
Produced by Michiko Ogura for ArtEngineers in cooperation with void+ / with the assistance of Minato Support Program for Arts and Cultural Activities, Aoyama, Minato-Ku, Tokyo. / Presented at void+, Tokyo, June 2018. Performers: Todoroki Masashi , Kubota Itsuki Videographer: Mikami Ryo, AH
ANTROPOFAGIA

[work#1, 2015, 304 x 200cm / work#2, 2016, 200 x 165cm / work#3, 2017, 51 x 70cm / work#4, 2018, 51 x 70cm / work#5, 2018, 200 x 150cm / work#6, 2018, 51 x 70cm / work#7, 2019, 304 x 200cm] [[all acrylic on canvas]]
MAKING ALL THINGS EQUAL

•REVERSAL OF CONTINGENCY INTO NECESSITY, 10 min, CGI, HD video, sound produced by RAVAU, 2016.
•Oikonomia, digital prints on paper, series of 30 images, print size 20 x 28 cm, 2016.
•Earth Melancholy—Walks on the Edge—Between Exception and Rule—Cold Wind on the Lips—Then Disappears, glass, dimension variable, 2016
GAGPROJECTS - 26.10.16—27.11.16 “The irremediable antagonism between desire and the excesses of permission seems to support those prophets like André Breton who, toward the end of his life, feared that by revealing and permitting all, we might end up depriving desire of its force.” J-C. Guillebaud. Freedom, liberty, equality, power, desire, authority, oppression and submission ground Hassan’s new GAG exhibition. OIKONOMIA, a series of 30 works - the impetus of which started as a response to Goya’s Caprichos is formed from the defacement of photographic documentation of extreme sexual practices, absorbed in an abstract fluid system of painting to reveal unexpected images. Monstrous formations emerge as a result, out of the integral accident and our thirst for exposure and consumption - relationship occurring between total abstraction and rationality. Showing concurrently, REVERSAL OF CONTINGENCY INTO NECESSITY is a large scale projection, a landscape devoid of human presence, a space outside our jurisdiction. The image is split in two perspective sections that fly away from each other, the structure acts as a proposition of opposite, possibilities of the same event – nihilism and morality, contingency and necessity. Separating the two planes are individual capital letters that systematically appear; if put together they form a passage from the Adjustment of Controversies by Zhuangzi.
ITERATIONS FROM THE ORIGINAL MODEL

collaborative project : Ariel Hassan & Felix Larreta.
installation view from Personal Structures - Crossing Borders, Palazzo Bembo - Venice Biennale 2015 technical adviser & production: Luciano Carizza | IT: P Proverbio | Supported by Fundación M. E. Mitre, Derivative, GAGPROJECTS
Conceived as a multi-sensorial space, Iterations From The Original Model is an investigation that brings together references of natural chaotic formations with the universal precision of mathematical principles. The work suggests a journey – an expedition into unexplored lands from unknown times, where psychoactive images and sound allow the viewer to dive around and within a space beyond thought, of meditation and communion. In the visual component of the work, chaotic images originating from incidental flows of paint have been transformed into topographical foci – two crystalline three-dimensional terrains of 1 x 1.618 m. Over these irregular landscapes, animations of the original images illustrate and illuminate the topology. Tones change and iterate within geometric sections that refract light over and across the valleys and mountains; the event invites visitors to explore the fundamental properties of an image that seems to exist without being fully revealed. The geometric tilings, like satellite scanning interpreting the terrain, provoke the viewer into a symbiosis with the work through its various stages and phases. These same movements activate atmospheric melodies that aim to conduct the visitor through a further dimension. Both images and sounds ebb, flow and follow as we approach the works. The music is concerned with psychoacoustic phenomena, but it is the private encounter between the visitors and the work, which triggers and generates it. The sound follows Phi through Fibonacci spirals held within a hyper-dodecahedron structure composed by software; each visitor activates a specific melodic spiral that perpetually moves, never repeating, hereby adding to the complexity and harmony of the encounter. The virtual fourth-dimensional space, much like an organism that can feel our presence, directs the visual-acoustic relation towards a place of intimate personal awareness.
O.O.F.W.T.G.Z.O.P.E.R.

[ORGANIC OCCURRENCES FORMING WITHIN THE GREY ZONES OF PRE-EXISTING REGIMES] b&w digital photographic prints [#1–10], 200 x 123.1 cm, 2014

Aleatory images of fluid paint have been circumscribed within the proportions of the Fibonacci rectangle, and later dissected by its sections and by an arrangement of Lemoine’s geometric construction of the golden ratio. The geometric and organic sections come together to recompose the topology of an unknown territory, escaping definition; the sectioning affects the plasticity of the fixed image to form and deform further images within the complex maps and into our imagination.
What we first see in these large photographs is only the surface of a much deeper ground, a virtual space where the point of view of the structure and that of the event, including the event of our viewing, converge. Thus the frame becomes a portal into the structure, into the environmental magic of the work, an access into a space of singularity far from discourse.
These images behave as open components of an ever changing event. They are open to being, but nothing in particular, as they are proportioned within structures that can articulate and survive every answer. What we see therefore are not pictures of the imaginary, but contact images, irrational events captured within transitory moments represented in our time with a degree of fidelity.
TRACES AND DETERMINANTS

3 channel video installation, 21 minutes loop, 2012/14, sound : Rafał Krzysztoszek | Installation view, CAPITULATION OF DISCOURSE, October 2014, GAGPROJECTS
I.O.L.D.

The I.O.L.D [intrigues of long duration] series of works is constructed from traces left by actions which happened prior to the work: accidents of paint and the aleatoric arrangements of networks. These structures occur organically and determine each work. Determined by chance, in turn they become also traces, contact images or attested translations of a bigger previous event.

INTRIGUES OF LONG DURATION, [#2–6], acrylic on canvas, 65 x 50 cm.
I.O.L.D [drawing], [#7–8], graphite on paper, 130 x 100 cm.
Untitled (prototype for 'clusters'), resin, 66 x 56 x 23 cm, steel base.
I.O.L.D [drawing], [#1–6], graphite on paper, 65 x 50 cm.
Untitled, installation - steel cable, foil, lights, dimension variable.
INTRIGUES OF LONG DURATION, [#1], acrylic on canvas, 250 x 200 cm.
ABOUT MADNESS SERIES

2011-2012
ABOUT MADNESS – PAINTINGS [#1–4], ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, 137 X 101.50 cm
ABOUT MADNESS – POEMS [ MIWH – MNEM – ITSIBD – NFF – AFA – LGH – HLMN – IEHTD], digital print, acrylic on canvas, 137 X 101.50 cm
ABOUT MADNESS – VORTEX [#1–5], digital print, acrylic on canvas, 137 X 101.50 cm
HFV PROJECT

Digital photography/light-box transfers, (#1-15, 2007) (#16-55, 2012-13 - in collaboration with the people from Kochi, India (for K.M.Biennale#1))
installation view, KMB#1, Kochi, India, 12/2012
complete series
#22
#34
#39
#50
#54
HFVPROJECT, 20 min, HD video, 2012 (extract)
INTERSECTION SETS

A large continuous image was divided in triangular units that intersect to compose various geometric forms. The continuity of the original image shifts to new aleatoric configurations.

HEXAGON, digital print, composition with 180 units, 105 x 120 cm
TRIANGLE, digital print, composition with 72 units, 78 x 90 cm
MONOTONIE, digital print, wall installation, dimension variable
TRIANGLE, digital print, composition with 16 units, 39 x 45 cm
DOULE HEXAGON, digital print, composition with 12 units, 30 x 30 cm
SQUARE, digital print, composition with 14 units, 37.5 x 37.5 cm
RECTANGLE, digital print, composition with 22 units, 30 x 52 cm
W.W.F.T.L.–O.H.W.L.–T.W.A.T.L.O.E

[WE WERE FASTER THAN LIFE–OH HOW WE LAUGHED–THIS WAS ALL THE LIFE ON EARTH]
#1–8, nickel plated steel, duratran, glass, mirror, LED, circuit, 57 x 44 x 10 cm (each), 2011

the ghostly images appear and disappear over the mirror surface in phases of 2 minutes duration. The mirror is affected, it forces the viewer to see beyond the familiar specular representation and away from the expected identification. Identification is an important aspect of the imaginary, a realm of deceptive surface appearances.
MODELS

Tension structures - models from synaptic transmission. 2012-3
· model M.O.A.S.A.I.
· model A.H.M.F.R.R.I
· model M.O.N.A.I.I.D.
· model A.M.M.F.R.O.F.
· model A.C.M.F.R.O.O.
GHOST PAINTINGS

[#1–5] 2008-11, acrylic on canvas, resin, wood, 250 x 164.5 x 90 cm (each)
B.C.STRUCTURES

Cluster strucures of a rhomboidal module constitute the B.C. series of works; presented in radial arrangements the modules imitate the geometry of hematoidin, blood crystals, as they form under conditions of reduced oxygen tension.

—ORBIT OF A VAST DULL ETERNITY, 2010, MDF, 250 Ø.

—SILENT SPIRAL, 2010, MDF, 51 x 39 x 39 cm.

—AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN, 2010, 210 x 120 x 40 cm.

—DENSITY SEPARATION DENSITY DISTRIBUTION DENSITY DEPENDANCE, 2010, (black version), 40 X 130 X 55cm

—Geometry of Resistance (I.C.B.B.I.A.N.A.C.M.A.K.O.I.S.), 2008, acrylic on MDF, 400 x 400 x 26 cm

—LAST LOVE SCENE, 2008, installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

—LAST LOVE SCENE, 2008, wood, MDF, lights, dimension variable.

—Geometry of Resistance (W.R.T.B.Q.A.L.), 2008, acrylic on MDF, 105 x 110 x 26 cm

—Geometry of Resistance (S.A.Y.M.T.G.O.), 2008, acrylic on MDF, 85 x 120 x 26 cm

—Geometry of Resistance (W.W.Y.D.W.E.A.B.), 2008, acrylic on MDF, 110 x 110 x 26 cm

—LAST LOVE SCENE, 2008, wood, MDF, lights, 110 x 120 x 100 cm (apprx).
TBMKF WORKS

TBMKF I , 2005, 97 x 486 cm | TBMKF II, 2007, 187 x 420 cm | TBMKF III, 2009, 321.5 x 90 cm. | each work: acrylic on canvas in three parts.