Fair Warning: A Conversation with Jonas Lund
On 12 April 2016, Phillips and Whitechapel Gallery hosted a panel discussion celebrating the launch of Fair Warning. In case you missed it, we invite you to watch the archived livestream of the event. The panelists included Jonas Lund, Emily Butler, the Mahera and Mohammad Abu Ghazaleh Curator at Whitechapel Gallery, Heather Corcoran, Independent Curator and Producer, and Megan Newcome, Director of Digital at Phillips.
Jonas Lund, Fair Warning (2016), Installation View at Whitechapel Gallery. Photo: Stephen White
Online Commission
Jonas Lund: Fair Warning
7 April – 12 June 2016
‘We’re living in the age of metrics and quantification. Every part of our daily lives is being measured and evaluated. While statisticians and big data prophets swear by the value of its quantification, there is room to question the efficiency and bias it creates in its path.’ – Jonas Lund
Swedish artist Jonas Lund’s online work Fair Warning (2016) was jointly commissioned by Whitechapel Gallery and Phillips in spring 2016 to coincide with the exhibition Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966).
In Fair Warning, Lund (b. 1984) encourages viewers to participate in an interactive online questionnaire by responding to a series of over 300 questions ranging from colour preferences, politics and emotions to trends in the art world.
Playing with our expectations of traditional online quizzes or personality tests, the work seeks to examine the value and use of data collection when attempting to represent user tastes, asking whether an objective way of measuring the value of art exists.
Fair Warning was hosted on Whitechapel Gallery and Phillips’ websites from 7 April – 12 June 2016 and can be accessed at fairwarning.tech.
Installation View at MiArt with Steve Turner
Booth D05
April 7 – 10, 2016
April 7: 12pm VIP Preview; 6 – 9pm Vernissage
April 8 – April 9: 12 – 7pm
April 10: 11am – 7pm
For Miart 2016, Steve Turner will present a solo booth by Berlin-based Jonas Lund featuring works that relate to both technology and to the market for emerging artists. Lund will present live streaming videos, illuminated digital paintings, video-sculpture hybrids and text-based enamel signs.
Speed Show LA: Manifesto
7:00-10:00 PM, Thursday, February 18, 2016 fb-event
at iPC Bang Internet Cafe, http://www.yelp.com/biz/i-pc-bang-internet-cafe
401 S Vermont Ave, Koreatown,
Los Angeles, CA 90020
On Wednesday the 10th of February, visual artist Folkert de Jong will open the exhibition Prospects & Concepts during Art Rotterdam. It is the fourth edition of this exhibition wherein the Mondriaan Fund presents young talent, will be open to the public from the 11th to the 14th of February, in the Van Nellefabriek in Rotterdam. The exhibition presents work by 54 visual artists who received a Talent Development Grant in 2014 in order to start their careers. Prospects & Concepts is curated by Noor Mertens, curator Modern and Contemporary Art & City Collection at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
Participating artists
Emmanuel Adjei & Marleen Özgür – Goeun Bae – Silvia Bakker – Sohrab Bayat – Maarten Boswijk – Kim David Bots – Deniz Buga – Doris Denekamp – Valentina Desideri – Miriam Donkers – Tanja Engelberts – Anne Geene – Dimitar Genchev – Theun Govers – Sarah Grothus – Meinke ten Have – Susan van Hengstum – Menno Hiele – Michiel Hilbrink – Roos Holleman – Anne Huijnen – Alexandra Hunts – Susanna Inglada – Thijs Jansen – Paul de Jong – Jakob de Jonge – Catinka Kersten – Ingmar König – Susan Kooi – Maurits Koster – Peter de Krom – Charl Landvreugd – Johannes Langkamp – Ola Lanko – Pia Louwerens – Jonas Lund – Silvia Martes – Lana Mesic – Kaweh Modiri – Malou van der Molen – Natalia Ossef – Jaya Pelupessy – Willem Popelier – Pieter van der Schaaf – Nicoline Timmer – Diego Tonus – Sarka Vancurova – Dieke Venema – Loek van Vliet – Jiska de Vries – Marleine van der Werf – Ran Zhang – Corine Zomer
The exhibition will present work from a range of disciplines – from paintings to installations, from photography to performances; from as of yet unknown talent to artists who have already completed several widely discussed projects. Noor Mertens purposely avoided attempts to make a coherent whole of the exhibition. She views Prospects & Concepts as a manifestation of diverse individual presentations, whereby the work of every visual artist is shown in its own context. This batch includes a striking number of photographers and painters. Most photographers take a documentary type approach. Others play around with the medium of photography more, like for instance Tanja Engelberts, Anne Huijnen, Ola Lanko and Jaya Pelupessy. There are (….) ‘classical’ painters such as Dimitar Genchev, Theun Govers, Thijs Jansen, Jakob de Jonge and Natalia Ossef, who reflect minimally on the medium of painting. Others, such as Kim David Bots, Paul de Jong and Ran Zhang, relativize painting traditions, and their styles go beyond painting. Furthermore, there are visual artists who focus on video or longer film, and artists who have more hybrid practices, such as Jonas Lund, Susan Kooi and Charl Landvreugd.
LIMA and the artist Jonas Lund are proud to present For Preview Only, a 24-hour piece based on the LIMA collection. The ‘For Preview Only’ files of 2336 works and 463,8 hours of art have been appropriated by the artist and brought together in a 24-hour (online) piece.
We happily invite you to attend the launch and screening of the work For Preview Only on Wednesday, February 3 from 3 PM at LIMA/LAB111 in the presence of the artist, followed by a day and night full of media art, talks, presentations and other interventions until 3 AM!
The work will be screened for twelve hours non stop;
Food, drinks and blankets will be available;
You can walk in and out freely;
So, join us for a day and night of the LIMA collection!
Jonas Lund, ‘For Preview Only’
Wednesday February 3: 3 PM until Thursday February 4: 3 AM
LIMA, Arie Biemondstraat 111, Amsterdam
Entrance: 5 euros
Read more about the work on our website: http://li-ma.nl/site/article/first-lima-production-preview-only-jonas-lund
The production and event are sponsored by Creative Industries Fund NL
Electronic Superhighway (2016 – 1966)
29 January – 15 May 2016
Galleries 1, 2, 8 & Victor Petitgas Gallery (Gallery 9)
In January 2016 the Whitechapel Gallery presents Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966) a landmark exhibition that brings together over 100 artworks to show the impact of computer and Internet technologies on artists from the mid-1960s to the present day.
It features new and rarely seen multimedia works, together with film, painting, sculpture, photography and drawing by over 70 artists, including works by Cory Arcangel, Roy Ascott, Jeremy Bailey, Jonas Lund, Judith Barry, James Bridle, Douglas Coupland, Constant Dullaart, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Vera Molnar, Albert Oehlen, Trevor Paglen, Nam June Paik, Jon Rafman, Hito Steyerl, Ryan Trecartin, Amalia Ulman and Ulla Wiggen.
VBCN Open Space
Konijnenstraat 16A, Amsterdam
Open Tue-Sat 12-18
Dates: 18 Dec — 17 Jan
Opening 18 Dec, 16:30-21 hrs
Artists: Sema Bekirovic, Jonas Lund, Thomas van Linge and Céline Manz
The piece I contributed to the show
A series of achievement awards for each corporate collection participating in the exhibition VBCN 10 Jaar Jong. The VBCN (the Netherlands Association of Corporate Art Collections) is a cooperation of companies, organisations and institutions that, in addition to their core activities, collect (contemporary) art and currently consists of 52 corporate collections.
The awards are rewarded for outstanding achievements in a range of different fields, from ‘The Most Medium Diverse Collection’ to ‘The Best Collection Website’. The backbone of the awards are data provided by each collection, showing what’s in their collection, and the awards are loosely based on comparing and analysing the artists and the works in each collection against different metrics. What makes one collection unique from another, as seen through the perspective of comparative data analysis.
Legacy of the Void
Boetzelaer|Nispen
November 27th – January 23rd
Opening: November 27th, 17:00
Hi Assistant,
I hope this finds you well and that everything worked out as you hoped it would.
Isn’t it strange how quickly you can change your point of view, your belief system. You think and look at things endlessly, and then all of a sudden, it all looks different, it all feels different. What seemed so obvious before, now seems completely off, forcing you to move on, to leave your old beliefs behind.
I want to make new work.
I want to meet an artificially created demand of newness, to maintain the impression that something new is coming out of the studio; something new to Instagram, something new to share, something new to talk about.
I want to fulfil the expectation of unending newness… I need something that’s aware of its own history whilst being a culmination of contemporaneity. I need to stop talking about art and for us to just make something. I need something that’s neither good nor bad, that can’t be described as either.
I shouldn’t talk about art, but just make it.
I should expand and build upon the perception of an artist’s lifestyle that’s desired by so many, yet one that very few actually have.
Harm tells me that I should stop making art about art. His gallerist says so. But what if art and the art world is the perfect isolated summary of what it is to be human, and how we relate to each other? A networked microcosmos… with an audience.
2015 is coming to an end, do we really want another year of Facebook, on Facebook? Is that the best we can do? Maybe Constant was right in quitting Facebook, did it make him happier? I wonder. After all, he came back. Do we really need another platform, even if its indie?
So much work goes into getting us to click more ads, but we simply block them, even on our phones. The pages load faster, and the content is still free. The artworks are free to look at, to like on Insta- gram, but if you want to have them in your living room you have to buy them, and give the gallerist 50% commission. It’s a system of support, of uniqueness, of importance, of freedom, of archaic measures. This measurement and protocol doesn’t really make sense for art or anything else existing today, yet is ingrained within the idea of cultural capital that flows abundantly from platform to platform.
Maybe, the works that we create together can bring some solace, a moment of peace and quiet. Maybe blocking things out is the answer.
We should create something in order to not think about what it means to make, something that blocks out everything else happening in the white background.
Do you have some suggestions? I value your input.
Best,
Jonas
I’m giving a lecture at the Stedelijk the 12th of November called The 12 Networking Truths. Read more here and see the short excerpt of the talk below.
NOVEMBER 12, 2015: CREATIVITY IN THE READYMADE CENTURY
To conclude the series, we will devote our attention to the concept of the readymade, which fundamentally challenged ideas of artistic originality in an age of the neo-liberal flow of commodities. We will explore the fate of the readymade in contemporary society and visual culture, sustained by endless processes of appropriation, remediation, and remix on the one hand, and by the growing opportunities for individualization of consumer goods on the other.
Dieter Daniels will set out by discussing the notion of the readymade in its original meaning: mass-production of commodities. Originally, the term readymade was used to denote an off-the-shelf industrial product. As an example, in 1913, Henry Ford introduced the “moving assembly line” for standardized, low-cost motorcars, sold from stock instead of being produced on demand. Three years later, Marcel Duchamp, who had just arrived in the United States from Paris, first used the term readymade for an artwork. Since then, the idea of the readymade has become central to the artistic practice of the twentieth and twenty-first century, because, in a world full of things, the act of choice becomes creative and individualistic, replacing the myth of thecreatio ex nihilo. Daniels’ lecture will discuss the shifting relations of commodities, consumerism, creativity, and originality – with an outlook on the postmodern, re-contextualised neo-readymades of contemporary appropriation art.
Jonas Lund will give a lecture discussing some of his recent works, and how they explore notions of authorship, evaluation, and value creation within the contemporary art world and art production. From The Fear of Missing Out(2013), an exhibition in which the artist wrote a series of algorithms that created instructions for how to produce works of art, to Studio Practice(2014), in which the artist created his own factory for art production with an embedded evaluation system which was live-streamed over the Web. Lund often creates systems that question the value of the art object and how the surrounding network of the art world creates value. In a creative industries-inspired, app-centric cultural climate, wherein art is challenged to prove its usefulness and financial relevance, the possibility of mass produced, technology enabled art objects seems more appropriate than ever.
INAUGURAL EXHIBITION, CONTEMPORARY GALLERY. (Karl Patric Näsman, Sif Itona Westerberg)
Jonas Lund’s Contemporary Gallery
New Shelter Plan
October 9th – November 7th
Opening: 9th October, 17:00 – 22:00
Participating artists, ‘Inaugural Exhibition’:
Moa Alskog
Mads Lindberg
Karl Patric Näsman
Jon Erik Nyholm
Camilla Reyman
Viktoria Wendel Skousen
Sif Itona Westerberg
Press Text:
New Shelter Plan is a non-profit based in an old Carlbergs storage building in Copenhagen. The curatorial premise for a series of exhibitions is for invited artists to reflect on the division of the 185m2 exhibition space into accessible and inaccessible areas divided by a wall partition. The invited artists all deal with themes of access and restriction within their practice and are invited to challenge and expand on the concept within the space. The response of artist Jonas Lund is an installation replicating a front and back room of a commercial art gallery. A wall separates one third of the space which will be the front room exhibition space,while two thirds of the room is devoted to a back room for office,storage and behind the scenes logistical and networking operations.The internal infrastructure of the gallery has dictated the division of space via its proportional volume of activity.
The installation by Jonas Lund is a gallery space as a piece, which will put forth an group show including 6 Copenhagen based artists and one Stockholm based. The title for the installation, and the name of the gallery housed within New Shelter Plan is Contemporary Gallery. The front room will host the exhibition that the Contemporary Gallery puts forth titled “Inaugural Exhibition”, and the backroom will have an office installation, storage, and custom made shipping crates as containers for the works in the show. The entrance to the back room is accessible within the front room. There, you will enter into the back of the office, gaining a behind the scenes entrance to the backroom and the typical gallery operations.Contemporary Gallery looks at the nature of the gallery as a space divided by what goes on in the front and backroom: how value is created, mediated, evaluated and transported, how the logistics are dealt with, and in extension, the possible ‘manipulations’ going on in the back room.
Now Online: sentimentandmanipulation.com
Boetzelaer|Nispen are proud to present Sentiment and Manipulation, a new online work by Jonas Lund. Sentiment and Manipulation continues on Lund’s earlier project Studio Practice and explores how to evaluate successful compositions and forms.
On the website http://sentimentandmanipluation.com a 3×10 meter canvas is visible, presented in a map like system. To the left of the screen there’s a crop tool, which can be used to divide the canvas into smaller compositions. These can in turn be reserved and purchased by a selection of invited collectors, stretched on high quality stretcher bars and signed as works of art.
STRINGS ATTACHED
March 21 – May 2, 2015
Opening reception: Saturday, March 21, 7 – 9
Steve Turner is pleased to present Strings Attached, a solo exhibition by Amsterdam-based artist Jonas Lund which will feature 24 text-based paintings that relate to the current “bubble moment” in contemporary art. Each work uses text that restricts the transfer of ownership in some way, such as “This painting may never be sold at auction” or “This painting must be resold by March 21, 2017.” Lund uses fabric wallpaper as backgrounds for the works, and their messages have been painted by a sign painter according to Lund’s directions. As a group, the 24 paintings encompass contradictory efforts made by gallerists who both want to fuel market momentum for their artists while trying to shield them from the damaging effects of quick-profit speculation.
Jonas Lund (born 1984, Linköping, Sweden) creates paintings, sculpture, photography, websites and performances that incorporate data from his studies of art world trends and behavior. He earned an MA at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam (2013) and a BFA at Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam (2009). He had solo exhibitions at Showroom MAMA, Rotterdam (2013) and Steve Turner (2014) and has had work included in numerous group exhibitions including at Eyebeam, New York; New Museum, New York, Xpo Gallery, Paris; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and De Hallen, Haarlem. His work has been written about on Rhizome, Huffington Post, Furtherfield and Wired.
Luis Hidalgo, Yung Jake, Jonas Lund
STEVE TURNER
UNTITLED MIAMI BEACH
LUIS HIDALGO
YUNG JAKE
JONAS LUND
RAFAËL ROZENDAAL
MICHAEL STANIAK
December 1 – 7, 2014
Booth B30
Monday
6–9 | Vernissage
Tuesday
1–3 | Press Preview
3–7 | VIP Preview
Return of Investment has been re-launched as an artist proof with slightly modified terms of service for the Unoriginal Genius show at Carroll/Fletcher in London, curated by Domenico Quaranta. The piece is install facing the street as to operate fully as an advertisement board.
Unoriginal Genius
Carroll / Fletcher Project Space, London
31 October – 22 November, 2014
Private View: 30 October, 6.30 – 8.30pm
Performance of JEG ER ENORME JæVLER by Roberto Fassone at 7:30pm
Kim Asendorf, Enrico Boccioletti, Emilie Brout & Maxime Marion, Caroline Delieutraz, Roberto Fassone, Emilie Gervais & Felix Magal, Yung Jake, Sara Ludy, Jonas Lund, Lorna Mills, Ryder Ripps, Evan Roth, Krystal South, Harm Van Den Dorpel
Curated by Domenico Quaranta
‘Unoriginal genius’ is a term coined by literary critic Marjorie Perloff and referenced by artist and poet Kenneth Goldsmith at the beginning of his book Uncreative Writing (2011). According to Perloff and Goldsmith, the romantic notion of genius is outdated. “An updated notion of genius would have to center around one’s mastery of information and its dissemination.” In a media environment that floods us with all kinds of information and data, originality and creativity do not disappear, but have to be recoded in order to turn one’s skills at filtering, selecting, archiving, reframing, and combining existing content – until now discarded as appropriation and plagiarism – into their main value. If the abundance of ready-to-use information and cultural content has become one of the defining features of our age, and copy/paste one of the main tools implemented in any digital interface, the way in which an artist deals with existing cultural material becomes one of the main parameters on which we can evaluate their work. Read more here