Hidden away in the corner of the Collectors Lounge is Virtual Frontiers, Art Basel‘s collaboration with Google Arts & Culture, the results of a group of artists who were invited to create works using the Tilt Brush virtual reality app. And if you wondered why you needed to upgrade your pc and buy a VR headset, Tilt Brush a 3D drawing and painting application is that reason. Released a year ago (sadly only for Windows) it is quite amazing both in the creative sense and in the exploration of other’s creations.
The artists invited to explore and create with Tilt Brush for Art Basel included Cao Fei, Robin Rhode, Sun Xun and Yang Yongliang who attended residencies at Google’s offices in Beijing and Paris to create the series of interactive works on display during the show and in which you can literally climb inside and explore the creations.
Eternal Landscape (2017), Yang Yongliang‘s Tilt Brush work uses the ‘Shan Shui’, traditional style of Chinese ink painting that depicts scenery or natural landscapes and is often considered to be one of ancient China’s most important contributions to the history of art. ‘Eternal Landscape’ recreates a traditional Shan Shui landscape in a virtual immersive realm, while trying to preserve the classical aesthetics.
With Gusheshe (2017), which in South African township slang translates to ‘go faster’ or ‘very fast’, Robin Rhode references the BMW E30, a model that was produced and driven on the streets of the townships of South Africa in the early 1990’s, a politically tumultuous time for the country. Rhode took inspiration from the iconic street culture in South Africa and re-imagined ‘Gusheshe’ animated in a virtual setting.
The Previous Life of the Yimatu Mountain (2017) by Sun Xun is a portrait of Yimatu, the highest mountain in Fuxin in Liaoning Province, the artist’s hometown. It focuses on the way the artist imagines what life around the Yimatu mountain would have been like in the past.
Cao Fei’s mixed reality film, titled Derivation Blurs the Virtual and Physical Worlds (2017), declares a utopian future where walls and societal restrictions are broken and new conversations and new possibilities emerge.
In addition to being able to explore the VR artworks the ‘Conversations‘ part of Art Basel features Cao Fei and Yang Yongliang in conversation with Freya Murray, Program Manager, Google Arts & Culture. They will discuss the artists’ approach to making art in virtual reality, the impact virtual tools such as Tilt Brush can have on artistic practice and more broadly on the arts in general. The talk will take place at the fair in the auditorium on level 1, at the entrance of Hall 1A of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, on Wednesday, March 22 at 3.30pm. If you can’t make it, all the talks from the fair can be watch here later www.artbasel.com/hongkong/conversations.
Abigail Reynolds: based in Cornwall, United Kingdom, Abigail Reynolds studied English Literature at Oxford University before pursuing Fine Art at Goldsmiths University. Her interest in books prompts her collages, sculptures, films and most recently, printmaking. The ideas driving Reynold’s work are based on reportage photography books, her interest in networks of association and how our sense of time is affected by technology. She has exhibited at art institutions and galleries in London, Vienna, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Eindhoven. In her presentation at Art Basel in Hong Kong, Reynolds incorporates a large-scale sculpture which will print her sourced images onto glass for the first time.
Newsha Tavakolian: born in 1981, Newsha is a Tehran based photo-journalist and artist. Early in her career she produced photo documentaries in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Pakistan and Yemen and gained international recognition with work published in magazines and newspapers such as Time, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and the New York Times. Tavakolian’s exhibitions include Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, Aaran Gallery, Tehran, and Otto Gallery, Florence. In her photography installation for Art Basel in Hong Kong 2016 she documents the lives of nine Teheran residents combining wall size scenery with a large video screen and several photographs of varying sizes into an installation drawn from her forthcoming exhibition and book ‘Blank pages of an Iranian photo album’
Alvin Zafra: born in 1978 in Quezon City, Philippines, Alvin graduated from the College of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines in 2000 and won the Dominador Castaneda Award for Visual Essay. He’s exhibited at West Gallery, Quezon City, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. In his exhibition at Art Basel in Hong Kong, Zafra explores two different cities and their architectures. The drawings presented are based on photographs he took in the National Capital Region of the Philippines and in Hanover, Germany.
