Ornella Fieres

France

Paris

PRISKA PASQUER GALLERY

Photography

Postcards to M / GAN18

Postcards to M / GAN14

Postcards to M / GAN17

Inverse Fourier 36

Postcards to M / GAN15

Inverse Fourier 37

Inverse Fourier 35

PRISKA PASQUER PHYSICAL GALLERY

Curator Tina Sauerlaender presents the work of artist Ornella Fieres.

In the works of artist Ornella Fieres, new technologies meet analog found objects from times past. The artist instrumentalizes photographs from personal estates and archival material from scientific films for her own purposes. She is concerned with "transferring the past into the present and making the invisible processes of the digital visible." Her works show the world of yesterday, seen through the eyes of today's algorithms.

The basis for Ornella Fieres' series Postcards to M / GAN (2021) are flower postcards from the 1960s and 1970s. The postcards come from the estate of an East Berliner, and were acquired by the artist at an online flea market. A self-teaching artificial intelligence called a GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) studies the postcards’ motifs and then creates its own images based on what it has learned. The works illustrate the machine's view of the data that has been entered, creating a matter of fact depiction and a poetic yet irritatingly artificial result.

GANs are self-teaching, but they are nevertheless the products of the people who continue to explore and advance knowledge in the fields of science and computer technology. They symbolize the tireless spirit of discovery. The video work An Algorithm for Snowfall (2019) shows an algorithm-based reconstruction of scientific films, which are played in parallel once forwards and once backwards, by the artist. Fragments from mountain climbs, microscopic observations, and melting glaciers appear distorted in slow motion. The sequences thematize the entangled relationship between researcher and their environment. Quite often, humans intervene in nature without knowing the effects their actions will have on the environment, often with devastating consequences. In the middle of the film, the two film clips meet, run synchronously for a moment, and then disappear again into their spirals. In this temporal distortion, progress and regression cannot be meaningfully distinguished by human perception. 

For Inverse Fourier (2021), Ornella Fieres appropriates visual materials from various estates. The artist changes her visual input with the help of the Fourier transform (FT), an algorithm for image compression. She intervenes in the calculations, removing parts from the system, so that it will reproduce her selected output incorrectly. Fieres does not know the result in advance, nor the consequences of her actions. This intervention symbolizes the intervention of humans. Those who, inspired by the spirit of exploration, climb or dismantle mountains, encircle the world with electric cables, or produce atomic reactions. This process is exemplified by the works in the series. By visualizing the disruption in the system, the artist provides insight into the "mindset" of the algorithm. 
The title of the exhibition was borrowed from the video work I create paths that lead to the clouds in which we go (2020), in which an artificial intelligence creates a poetic-dystopian vision of the end times based on all the texts that have been written about Ornella Fieres' works to date. This vision also has its hopeful sides, as Ornella Fieres' works always reflect two sides of the same coin. They illustrate both human and computer-generated perception. On the one hand, they compare the relationship between the artist and her tools with the careless interventions of man in nature. On the other hand, they symbolize the creative potential of her collaborative work. Above all, Fieres' works remind us that artificial intelligence, although complex, was created by humans. They therefore reflect one thing above all else: human nature.  

The artist Ornella Fieres (*1984 in Frankfurt) lives and works in Berlin. She studied at Macquarie University in Sydney and at the HfG Offenbach, where she is currently working on her PhD in media studies. Her resume includes international exhibitions at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Goethe Institut Toronto, the Literaturhaus Berlin and galleries in New York and Berlin.

The art historian Tina Sauerlaender works internationally as an independent curator. She has curated exhibitions on Virtual Reality (VR) in New York (Parsons/The New School), Toronto (Goethe-Institut) and Basel (Haus der elektronischen Künste). She is the artistic director of the VR KUNSTPREIS, which is awarded by the Deutsche Kredit Bank (DKB) in cooperation with the Contemporary Arts Alliance (CAA) Berlin. She is the co-founder and director of the internationally active exhibition platform peer to space and the co-founder and director of the international online research database for Virtual Reality art, Radiance VR. Additionally, she is the co-founder of Kara Agora, the art and research center in Mozilla Hubs and the founder of the international women's network SALOON, whose Berlin branch she co-directs with artist Ornella Fieres. She is a PhD candidate at the Kunstuniversität Linz (Interface Cultures with Prof. Christa Sommerer) where she is researching the topic of artistic self-presentation in the digital age. Her thematic focus also includes the influence of the Internet and the digital on both society and our personal lifeworlds.

Link to enter PRISKA PASQUER VIRTUAL GALLERY   https://hubs.mozilla.com/dXKtRAY/ORNELLA_FIERES_EXHIBITION/

ORNELLA FIERES - LIGHT SHINES THROUGH THE CURTAINS OF TIME

ORNELLA FIERES - LIGHT SHINES THROUGH THE CURTAINS OF TIME

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