ADAM BASANTA
All We’d Ever Need Is One Another (Trio)
Exhibition at Espace CIAC MTL in May 2020

« 63%_match: Imi Knoebel “Green in Concert”, 2004 » 2019. Archive paper print. 106 x 79 cm (42” x 31”).

Where : at Espace CIAC MTL, 8 boul. de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quartier des spectacles.

When : from May 6 to 31, 2020. Open daily from noon to 8 p.m.

Free

The Centre international d’art contemporain de Montréal (CIAC MTL) presents young Israeli-Canadian artist Adam Basanta at Espace CIAC MTL in May: All We’d Ever Need Is One Another (Trio), a fusion of intelligence artificial and artistic creation. Come and discover a real Art Factory, an artificial intelligence constantly creating, before your eyes, new works of art! Exploring the limits between humans and machines, and challenging the very notion of creation – even copyright – the artist Adam Basanta invites us to reflect on the place of AI in creation by sitting it down at the artist’s stool, a place traditionally occupied by a human …

Guest Curator : Anne-Marie Boisvert, Post-doctoral fellow in philosophy of artificial intelligence (AI). Editor-in-Chief at AI CIAC MTL Magazine, Centre international d’art contemporain de Montréal (CIAC MTL).

Assistant Curator : Vincent Godin-Filion, General and Artistic Direction Assistant, Centre international d’art contemporain de Montréal (CIAC MTL).

Programming: Exhibition of works by Basanta generated by artificial intelligence, around an installation allowing visitors to observe the AI in the process of “artistic creation”. As well:

• Debate led by the CIAC MTL between the artist and various recognized speakers from the world of new technologies on the concept of creation and its meaning in the era of AI;
• Public meetings with AI and digital art specialists led by Anne-Marie Boisvert;
• Family and school educational workshops.

Artist’s website: www.adambasanta.com

The artist is represented by Gallery Ellephant

BIOGRAPHY

Photographie : Emily Gan, 2018

ADAM BASANTA (b. 1985) is an artist, composer, and performer of experimental music. Born in Tel-Aviv (ISR) and raised in Vancouver (CAN), he lives and works in Montreal (CAN) since 2010.

Since 2015, his works have been exhibited in galleries and institutions including the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal (CAN), Optica Centre d’art contermporain (CAN), Fotomuseum Winterthur (CH), Arsenal Art Contemporain (CAN), Galerie Charlot (FRA), National Art Centre Tokyo (JPN), V Moscow Biennale for Young Art (RUS), Carroll/Fletcher Gallery (UK), American Medium Gallery (NYC), Serralves Museum (POR), Edith-Russ-Haus fur Mediakunst (GER), York Art Gallery (UK), and The Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe (USA).

His work has been awarded several international prizes, including the Japan Media Arts Prize (2016) and the Aesthetica Art Prize (2017). In 2018 he was longlistes for the Sobey Art Award (CAN), and in 2019 he was the winner of the Prix Pierre Ayot (QC). He is currently represented by Ellephant Gallery (Montreal, CAN). His work can be found in the institutional collections of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and the Ville de Montréal.

Remaining active as an experimental composer and performer, his concert music, live performances, and sound recordings are presented worldwide, including appearances in the MATA Festival (NYC), Gaudeamus Musicweek (NL), CTM Festival (GER), Akousma Festival (CAN), and Mutek Festival (CAN), and have been awarded multiple national and international prizes. His music has been released on Kohlenstoff Records (CAN), Farmacia901 (ITA), Important Records/Cassauna (USA), and Kasuga Records (GER).

He holds a BFA in Music composition from Simon Fraser University (Vancouver BC CAN) and an interdisciplinary Research-Creation MA in Fine Arts (Concordia University, Montreal QC CAN).

ARTISTIC STATEMENT

« Density as a physical property », 2017, sculpture (concrete, audio cables, metal). 

 

« My work explores technological practices as active, participatory, multi-sensory performances which are distributed throughout a variety of human, cultural, material and computational agencies. Through various media and techniques, I try to interrogate points of intersection between sensorial and conceptual manifestations of technology in our everyday life, revealing surprising facets of our daily intertwinement.

 

I employ commercial consumer technologies as my main sculptural vocabulary. By placing these objects in unconventional and absurd relationships to one another, I disrupt their ostensible technical and economic functions, transforming them into sculptural centerpieces. Through this transformation, such objects reveal their material agencies as contemporary prosthetics while simultaneously alluding to their anthropomorphic potentials.

 

I frequently arrange these functional readymades into reconfigured choreographic scenarios. These reconfigurations often involve a seemingly autonomous kinetic, time-based, or performative dimension. Allowing technological artifacts to act in direct relation to one another (rather than a “human user”), I aim to create spaces in which the interplay between viewer and mass produced technologies can be re-imagined, spaces in which technological artifacts function as elements in an self-sustaining ecology. »

 

 – Adam Basanta

All We’d Ever Need Is One Another (Trio)