Selfie
A show by Erica Lapadat-Janzen & Organ Armani
July 17-26, 2014

 

Erica Lapadat-Janzen & Organ Armani bring their selfies to the gallery. As a co-curated project between two internet artists, Selfie explores a subculture of micro-celebrity, virtual gaze and narcissism. See photos of the show on Flickr >

Critical praise for Selfie:

“Imagine the Statue of Liberty could take a Selfie.” — Kim Asendorf

“Selfies get easily lost, but a true Selfie though, a true Selfie happens once in a lifetime. Organ & Erica know this. They are their selfies, like Britney is the wind.” — Emilie Gervais

“Their work is like a calm wind of ideas observing a daydream; where thoughts materialize and create something oddly real.” — Toast McFarland

Erica Lapadat-Janzen is an independent new media artist and curator based out of Chinatown, Vancouver. For the last two years she has been a full-time working artist participating in media art projects around the world including The Wrong-New Digital Art Biennale, Gallery Online, Money.us, Kein Thema 23 Glitch Net Digital Art Festival (Germany), and Fantasia Mutante at Espacio Byte (Argentina). During this time she has curated numerous community led initiatives, art projects, and site specific events both independently and in collaboration with galleries and artist run centres. Some projects include: Camera/whore produced by On Main Gallery, a new media performance photo party that streams media to the internet; and Accumulator at Gallery 1965, a crowd-sourced new media showcase with live virtual gallery installations on rotation. Lapadat-Janzen’s artistic current output focuses on ideas of constructed identity, narcissism, and social representation in flux, in online space. She creates her work by utilizing and experimenting with tools such as web cameras, cellphones, digital photography, and various pirated programs.

Organ Armani is an artist living & working on the Internet. Organ has exhibited internationally, online and offline, and during his spare time, Organ lives in Vancouver. Organ Armani’s online practice is primarily social, and his subject matter draws from his network relationships. His work is technically rooted in painting and aspires to create a theatre of mass communication, concerned with verisimilitude, social branding, sexuality, and fashion. Throughout 2013 Organ made a pointed effort of placing the Selfie at the centre of his online practice, and applied his focus with philosophical zeal to the influence of the homegrown celebrity status of the everyday internet user. In 2014, Organ continues his practice, placing greater emphasis on dissolving the distinction between online and off-line identities.

© 2014 Hot Art Wet City