damian ortega at flag art foundation


The FLAG Art Foundation is pleased to announce Going International, a group exhibition of twenty international artists working in video, painting, photography, drawing, sculpture, and installation, producing an eclectic blend of voices from around the world. The title “Going International” refers to the act of investigating these diverse global perspectives. Culling from familiar imagery, the works represent whimsical interpretations of pop culture, literary references and everyday objects to create a space for disparate and exciting relationships.
Josephine Meckseper’s video Mall of America of Minneapolis’s mall of the same title, one of the top tourist destinations in the United States, can be read as a meditation on consumerism and American identity. Amie Dicke and Graham Little utilize re-imagined, appropriated and altered cultural imagery to reveal the fetishistic culture surrounding beauty, youth, and fashion. Wojciech Zasadni carves glossy magazine and book covers into lacquered wood, providing another interpretation of the international influence of mass media.
Elmgreen & Dragset weave a sense of humor with historical and social references in Modern Moses. By recontextualizing the biblical narrative with a baby doll in a carrycot left beside an ATM, the viewer becomes witness to the contemporary reality of child abandonment, adoption and the influence of money.







Damián Ortega’s Controller of the Universe, a series of found hand tools suspended in mid air, is a site of danger and otherworldliness. As if in mid explosion emanating from a center, it appears as though a force of nature has frozen them in time and space. The dynamic spherical formation of outward facing blades and points evoke connections between power and violence while Olafur Eliasson’s Turbosphere employs geometric forms and patterns using light that invoke color and the subjective perception of the viewer. A neon tube within an intricate structure of colored glass and stainless steel forms in a concentric spiral draws the eye to the light as well as the prismatic effect it generates.
more of 2012
Damián Ortega and Gabriel Orozco
at the 11th Havana Biennial, 2012
Abraham Cruzvillegas
in conversation with Mónica de la Torre
Carlos Amorales
Manifesta 9
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