GROUPE GUMA GUAR / curator: sráč sam
After several years of diminished activity, Groupe Guma Guar presents Heaven in the Sam83 Gallery. By using uncensored photographs of war victims along with strained theatricality and irony, the group signals a return to the “classic” works of its beginnings in the first decade of the new millenium. From the time of its founding in 2003, Guma Guar presented a range of art projects whose theme was the “conflict of civilization” and a polemic concerned with a neoliberal ideology. The current exhibition should therefore be understood as a critical commentary toward cynicism and the hypocrisy of contemporary society. Above all, Heaven is a piercing anti-war PROTEST.
The multimedia installation attacks the viewer’s sight, hearing, sense of smell and perception of the space functioning as an imaginary “HEAVEN” which is simultaneously HELL. Emerging out of artificial “tutti-frutti” scented fog, a metaphorical presence of both paradisal clouds and the smoke of the smoldering rubble of bombed cities, are digital “LANDSCAPES” and “PORTRAITS” – photographs of ruined cities and harrowing shots of the victims of war. These STATIC images have been covered with a layer of appropriated ANIMATION. In the case of the landscapes, these are moving gif frames and empty Instagram meme keywords. The photographs of degraded human bodies have been edited using the Messenger and Camera360 applications while the source of Heaven’s auditory component is the iPhone SFX sound bank.
MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR, FUCK CAPITALISM!
GGG 2018
