Syndicate: Unexpected Obstacles: Perry Hoberman, Tapiola/Fi, Sept.-Oct.97

[Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@v2.nl>]

UNEXPECTED OBSTACLES
The Work of Perry Hoberman

Gallery OTSO
19.9-26.10.1997

http://www.hoberman.com/perry/otso/

On September 18th, UNEXPECTED OBSTACLES, a major retrospective of the work
of New York-based artist PERRY HOBERMAN opens at the OTSO Gallery in
Tapiola, Finland. A full color catalog, with essays on the artist's work,
will accompany the exhibition.

For nearly two decades, Perry Hoberman has been working with a wide variety
of technologies, ranging from utterly obsolete to seasonably
state-of-the-art. His retrospective at the OTSO Gallery (the artist's
first) includes more than fifty sculptures and installations, including
"Faraday's Garden", a viewer-activated symphonic appliance installation;
"The Empty Orchestra Cafe", a radical post-performance neo-karaoke bar;
"Cathartic User Interface", a therapeutic multi-participant input system;
and "Bar Code Hotel", winner of the top prize at the 1995 Interactive Media
Festival.

Hoberman has exhibited his work throughout the United States and Europe,
and teaches and lectures widely on art, media, interactivity and virtual
reality. His work is represented by Postmasters Gallery in New York.

The exhibition is curated by Erkki Huhtamo, media researcher, and PÅ ivi
Talasmaa, art historian and director of Gallery OTSO.

    "Computer keyboards, rolodexes, karaoke machines, barcode readers,
    obsolete household tools, film projectors, "prepared" suitcases,
    mechanical toys... Hoberman versus Junkman, or the not-such-a-chance
    meeting of the fleamarket bargain and the circuit board on the
    exhibition floor. Hoberman's art is about re-functionalizing the
    everyday environment, flooded by an endless stream of consumer goods
    and gadgets for anything and nothing: baking, cleaning, buying,
    exercising, communicating, trading, wasting time, consuming images
    and sounds. Hoberman's attitude towards this Gadgetspace is
    interestingly ambiguous; it is a mixture of affection, nostalgia,
    wonderment, irreverent pranksterism and intelligent satire. Instead
    of the dark shadows of neo-luddite technophobia, Hoberman evokes the
    feeling of unused opportunities: wonderful technological discoveries
    are marketed as appliances, which obliterates their full potential."

         - from "Hoberman vs. Junkman", catalog essay by Erkki Huhtamo

    "Rather than overarching critiques of technoculture, Perry Hoberman's
    work has aimed at assimilating its technologies, devouring its images,
    betraying its illusions, and creating a kind of raucous discourse.
    Less outright subversion than ingenious sabotage, the satiric
    constructions, parodic objects, mocked images, pseudo-virtual
    environments, iterated banalities, and efficient surfaces betray
    their own artifice as they signify just how deeply the expectations
    of artificiality have imbedded themselves in the imagination."

         - from "Bits and Pieces", catalog essay by Timothy Druckrey

Gallery OTSO 19.9-26.10.1997
UNEXPECTED OBSTACLES
The Work of Perry Hoberman

Tue-Fri 11-199, Sat-Sun 12-17
Ahertajankuja 4, Tapiola, Espoo, Finland
tel +358 9 816 57512
fax +358 9 816 57510
talasmaa@otso.pp.fi