Fotograf Magazine

In contemporary art, attention is rightfully distributed between physical galleries and virtual environments. With this year’s pandemic, this synergy has acquired an unprecedented importance, and although physical institutions are looking for ways to offer at least partial replacements to visits in person, neither online show openings nor 3D walkthroughs of digital renderings of the gallery space can supplant the galleries’ original function in the long term. Even before physical spaces were made unavailable, however, creative tendencies manifested themselves, in relation to post-internet modes of thought, that aimed to satisfy the artist’s and spectator’s desire for authenticity and narration in the work through both interfaces. Tendencies developed that combine fairy-tale or mythical symbolism and cyberspace to create new narratives. The three projects discussed here represent ways of moving among these worlds without necessarily subjecting one to the format of the other. How do we read these narratives when we do not know where they arise from? And is the space on the borders of the physical and the virtual not the most real currently on offer?