Office Space

Exiled by the Machines

 

October 15, 2022 - January 31, 2023

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Office Space is proud to present Exiled by the Machines, an exhibition that open ups a space for dialogue about humankind’s relationship with the earth, society, and the everyday. This exhibition provides a unique introspective look at individuals who inhabit these liminal spaces that are often removed from our daily lives. The two artists featured in this exhibition are Piotr Kotlicki and Sam Linguist.

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Piotr Kotlicki, a Polish artist, creates artworks that pull on the polar ends of binaries, such as “...Discipline - nonchalance. Imagination - observation. Dark - bright. Good - bad. Top - bottom...” Sam Linguist is an artist based out of New York and Waxahachie, Texas. His works connect the viewer back to small-town America “away from the elitism of the art world and into the wonderful mundanity of the real world.”

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The mixed mediums of their artworks engage with more than just the viewer’s visual experience but also with their auditory experience. Clips of dialogue run threw some of these video clips, in other instances, sound. Linguist’s work titled; The Hands Clasps a Little Stronger is a video clip consisting of a kaleidoscope of the landscapes of Marfa, Texas. The kaleidoscope has an interesting effect of both reduction and expansion of the landscape. Sometimes the various parts of the landscape merge together, whereas other times, they are noticeably fractured. The constantly shifting images paired with the soft metallic instrumental audio heightens the liminality between these fractured landscapes.

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Kotlicki has presented two different works; the first is Hey There Down in the Valley #7, and the other work is the Vitruvian Man. Hey There Down in the Valley #7, is about an eight-minute video with a landscape that slowly populates with tiny human figures. The humans, as they enter or fade out of the scene, are working on small repetitive tasks. A narrator, voiced by John Barry, is slightly distorted and fills the silence of the space and heightens the intimacy interaction between the viewer and the human figures throughout the scene.

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Vitruvian Man has a background painted in a similar style to the background of Hey There Down in the Valley #7; unlike the various figures, there is a singular figure with a mask-like face. He moves his arms up and down, mimicking the movements of Leonardo Da Vinci’s sketch of the Vitruvian Man. His movements then shift, and he steps towards the viewer his arms crossings and eventually to full circular motions that pull out of the background a dark circle. This circle expands, and the man fades from the frame leaving the viewer with an image similar to that of an eclipse.

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Together these artists, with their mixed mediums of paint, audio, and sound, push at the barriers of artistic mediums and encourage their viewers to push at their own set boundaries. It encourages us to explore our bodies in relation to the mundane and look outwards to the individuals in our everyday paths as we also participate in the day-to-day motions of life.

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—Alexis Davidson

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Piotr Kotlicki was born 1972 in Poland. Graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, Poland in 2000, diploma with Prof. Ryszard Hunger. Currently works at the National Film School in Łódź at The Film and Television Directing Department.His work is multimedia-oriented with an emphasis on painting and video. They have been displayed at: Ningbo Museum of Art (China), the National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the Audio-visual & new media arts festival Madatac in Madrid (Spain), the MS Dockville Festival in Hamburg (Germany), the International Video Festival in Novi Sad (Serbia), the Sandhofer Gallery, Salzburg (Austria), the Nachtspeicher23, Hamburg (Germany), the Simultan Festival, Timisoara (Romania), the National Audio-Visual Institute Warsaw (Poland), Assembly Gallery, Poznan (Poland), NordArt, Büdelsdorf(Germany), Drei Ringe, Leipzig (Germany), Strzelski Gallery, Stuttgart (Germany). Awards: 2016 Grand prix Freedom of Form, The Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre, Gdańsk, Poland; 2017 IV Piotrkow Biennal of Art, ODA, Piotrkow Tryb, Poland; 2014 Shortlisted for „100 painters of tomorow”, Beers Contemporary and Thames & Hudson, UK.

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Sam Linguist is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York, New York and Waxahachie, Texas. His work has been in group shows across the United States and solo shows across Texas. He is currently working towards his BFA at Parsons.