SKIN DEEP
Solo Exhibition of Jonas Blume
Curated by Tina Sauerlaender
At SCOPE BLN, Lübecker Str. 43, 10559 Berlin
April 29 – May 27, 2022
Friday, April 29, 6 – 22 pm: Opening
Skin defines the boundaries of our physical bodies and constitutes the interface for interaction with the world. Artist Jonas Blume uses his skin as medium to reflect on the relationship between reality and image worlds. In his works, skin appears in a liminal state oscillating between flat surface texture and three-dimensional volume, as a membrane between physical state and mediated hyperreality.
Based on photographs, Jonas Blume transfers his skin to a variety of mediums and materials to create an enhanced human physicality. The act of photographing reduces the human body to a two-dimensional surface. Jonas Blume creates new bodily shapes from this reduced image, which he reinserts into the physical world. He creates images, videos, sculptures, and installations with fabrics, AI filters, animations, and digital brushes. He distorts, extends, rearranges, and liquifies his appearance. This transformed physicality amounts to a new hyperreal subject reminiscent of the human body, yet no longer alive, suspended in limbo between unmediated and avataristic states. The artist’s body is at times still recognizable, other times it manifests in an estranged and uncanny haptic beyond resemblance.
Jonas Blume’s works address how bodies dissolve and reassemble within the current visual culture and image economy. They herald the new age of body consciousness that embraces all bodies, unified by their transformation into consumable images that generate visibility within the attention economy. Skin becomes a political canvas because it constitutes the inalienable individual capital that everyone may maximally exploit to personally compete within these economies. The contradictory notion of the term skin-deep emphasizes the reductive process that inducts an individual into the image world, yet it affords the transformational potential for reinventing oneself on the other side of the screen surface.
Artist’s Biography
Jonas Blume is a Berlin-based conceptual video and installation artist who builds his works from conceptual gestures that interrogate the relationship between the individual and its digital replication. While his work manifests as object, installation, video and performance, the underlying denominator is the détournement of digital image technologies by pushing them against their intended purpose towards the brink of collapse. In this liminal state, he excavates their inner workings, and playfully transforms them in ways that confront life and representation, and incite the viewer to situate themselves in a hyperreal visual culture where reality and image-world overlap. In 2016, Blume received his M.A. in Visual and Media Anthropology from Free University, Berlin. He also holds a B.F.A. in Sculpture and Art History from Pratt Institute. He received the Pratt Circle Award for Academic Excellence in 2013.
Accompanying Program:
Thursday, May 5, 17:30 - 19:30h: Opening Hours - Artist and curator are present
Afterwards 20 - 22h: LIGHT YEAR 85 screening >> Urban Algorithms - videos by Dennis Rudolph, Daniel Molnar, Jung Soo Cho, Vasilena Gankovska and Anne Glassner, curated by Boris Kostadinov
Monday, May 9, 6 pm CEST (online, in English): Artist Talk of Jonas Blume with Dr. Stephan Schwingeler, professor for Media Studies at HAWK University of Applied Sciences and Arts, author of the book Kunstwerk Computerspiel – Digitale Spiele als künstlerisches Material (transcript, 2014) - (Registration by email via tina@peertospace.eu)
Sunday, May 15, 14 - 16h: Opening Hours - Artist and curator are present
Friday May 20, 18h: Curator’s Tour and Artist Talk with Jonas Blume and Tina Sauerlaender
Friday, May, 27, 16 – 20 h: Finissage
All images (c) J. Pegman, 2022
