The east London club venue hosts the new group show from Mel Duarte, Maria Eisl and assume vivid astro focus (avaf)
East London's Dalston Superstore will be hosting the new ‘Series 3' exhibition featuring new works by Mel Duarte and Maria Eisl. Showing alongside will be a special DIY lightbox by 'assume vivid astro focus' (avaf). Duarte's piece entitled ‘The Reverse is Also True' is a site-specific wall piece conceived as a response to Dalston Superstore's building interior, playing on how perceptions of colour, space, texture and volume are experienced according to the light condition of this space - daylight versus artificial light.
The pieces are a series of six prints of the same image in different scales onto fabric. The shifts in scale play with different perceptions of the image surface according to the physical distance and intensity of light in the space. For 'Series 3', Maria Eisl will show ‘Ten Pictures for a Night Club’ engaging a visual conversation with the rest of the environment. Eisl isolated animated gif elements available in the colour chart of Duarte's piece, where each poster shows one moment of what seems to have been a confetti shower.
Dazed Digital: When did you begin ‘Ten Pictures for a Night Club’?
Maria Eisl: Not long ago. As the setting is a bar/club, I wanted to do a fun quick project in response to that. I'd been following Mel's work for more than ten years since we met at art college. She and I are using for this show devices we've been exploring for a while. But we've been commissioned to do this project barely a month ago and decided to bang it together very quickly. The attention and time I've given to it will almost be the same the viewing clubber will. Almost.
DD: In what ways do you think your work blends with Mel Duarte’s in order to bring together Series 3?
Maria Eisl: The dialogue had a formal starting point and we pushed the following logic to a certain absurdity. I used Mel's pieces' colour code to isolate graphic elements of a found 10-frame animation. They showed confetti, I guess. The result is a randomly impoverished picture, actually miles away from the formalist logic.
DD: How does your background in illustration, photography and film tie in with the nature of the exhibit?
Maria Eisl: Same source material, same tools, different displays. Animated gifs are the fringe where digital photography and film meet. DIY is certainly part of this encounter. I can turn still images into animations; or take photos of a video on another screen - it's more about processing images. I've got an iPhone.
DD: Can you explain what your visual conversation represents/about?
Maria Eisl: Fluidity. Misunderstandings. Flirt. Chance. Diplomacy. Late nights.
DD: What are you currently working on now?
Maria Eisl: A catalogue raisonné of my photograms archive.
Series 3, Dalston Superstore, 117 Kingsland High Street, London
