Virtual Reality Art
Faurschou Foundation is pleased to present some of the highest quality Virtual Reality artworks currently available in the world. The exhibition, Virtual Reality Art, will be exhibited in Beijing from August 27, 2017 to February 3, 2018, and will consist of 5 consecutive “sub-exhibitions” for each participating artist: Christian Lemmerz, Erik Parker, Paul McCarthy, Tony Oursler and Yu Hong.
Virtual Reality has made a successful entry onto the global market at an unusually fast pace. In the art world, this medium is entering a ground-breaking period, enabling artists to cross boundaries and expand their field unlike ever before. It is impossible to do justice to Virtual Reality artworks with a mere description, which is why, in order to understand them, one must experience them first-hand. The medium, thus, literally, opens up an entirely new world for both artists and viewers.
In collaboration with Khora Contemporary, Faurschou Foundation has worked with several internationally renowned contemporary artists to create Virtual Reality art, namely Christian Lemmerz, Erik Parker, Paul McCarthy and Tony Oursler. With this new exhibition, the Foundation will also reveal a new piece by Chinese artist, Yu Hong. Each artwork will be exhibited for a one-month period with complementary sketches, books and artworks for each of the artists and their respective VR pieces.
Faurschou Foundation is glad to continue collaborating with Khora Contemporary after the successful exhibition, New Media (Virtual Reality), in connection to the Venice Biennale 2017. Khora Contemporary was established in 2016 in Copenhagen by five partners with a common passion for art, and a shared vision of VR’s significance in the art landscape of the future. Khora Contemporary conducts extensive research on this progressive medium, and specializes in translating the vision of established and emerging artists into the language of VR. This makes Khora Contemporary the first production company to focus on creating contemporary artworks in Virtual Reality.
Entering the virtual reality of Lemmerz’s La Apparizione, one encounters the “Crucified One.” A golden, tortured body, released from the cross and floating in absolute darkness, his wounds revealing flesh and blood behind the glistening, metal surface of his skin. Exposed to the viewer through the extreme visuality of the VR medium is a fusion between the suffering “Saviour” and a bodybuilder, bordering on vulgarity. In this space, between pathos and irony, between fake and real, the Silver Surfer and Jesus Christ, the bodily event of death is endured – this death that we live.
Christian Lemmerz was born in Germany in 1959. Today he lives and works in Denmark and Italy. From 1978 to 1982, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara, Italy, and from 1983 to 1988 at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Lemmerz expresses himself in a variety of media, from film, performance, sculpture, drawing, painting, to installation works. Lemmerz has explored highly unconventional materials, such as his early organic sculptures made of margarine, or a work consisting of slaughtered pigs exhibited in glass cases. He also works with traditional materials, ranging from bronze to marble. Many of Lemmerz’s works focus on taboo-related themes, taken from contemporary, as well as historical events, where suffering, death, identity, and existence are central themes. The human body and the medium of sculpture have been particularly important to Lemmerz’s work, enabling the viewer to become an active participant. Lemmerz has had major solo exhibitions at Randers Art Museum (Denmark), SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Aros (Aarhus Art Museum, Denmark), Cisternerne (Copenhagen, Denmark), and has exhibited in Stavanger, Beijing, New York and Sao Paulo.