Created by Shiva Lynn Burgos in 2016 as an annual underground exhibition project committed to experimental processes and investigating the «gesture» through photo and film based art practices. GESTE is the nexus of a private collection, artwork from leading galleries, and a curated selection of both established and undiscovered artists. www.gesteparis.com
“The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” William Gibson
GESTE Paris is pleased to announce its sixth annual exhibition, Meta_Contra_Verse. This year’s exhibition features digital intangibles such as shape-shifting avatars, blockchain-based NFTs, physical and forged representations thereof, WEB 3.0, AI-generated art and text, the metaverse and “verse” in general as a lyrical counter-point in dialogue with photography, sculpture,
drawing and such representations of imaginary worlds in art history.
Meta_Contra_Verse, curated by Shiva Lynn Burgos, founder of GESTE, Camille Gajate and Georg Bak will include works by Arelis, Fiona Banner, Michael Betancourt, Clément Briend, SLB, Jarvis Cocker, Jen DeNike, Hamid Ebrahimnia, Félicie d’Estienne d’Orves, Benjamin Freedman, Claudia Fuggetti, Gus, Aaron Huey, Bart Krezolek, Manon Lanjouère, Janet Levy, MONOMO, Man Ray, Alvin Ng, Jurgis Peters, Damien Roach, Kenny Schachter, Space+, Adam Starr and Shane Wheatcroft.
Meta_Contra_Verse, takes its inspiration from influential philosopher Vilém Flusser who described photography in terms of a philosophical action or gesture. Since his death in 1991 the world of photography and image-making has expanded exponentially. Artificial intelligence is creating algorithmic hyper-interpretations, virtual and augmented reality let us explore worlds both real and simulated. Glitches in these systems are self-reflective and catalyse further creative opportunities.
Questions frame the exhibition: What would Flusser say when confronted with these novel realities and potentials? How can we play within and alongside (meta) the machine rather than against it (contra)? How have the means shifted our future’s future vision of creation? How are fears attached to these transformational media? Why is it contra_versial? Is there space for everyone in this space? What does it look like? Feel like? Smell like? Where do these bubbles divert and connect artistically?
In addition, an accomplished international jury has selected six winning entries, the result of an open call, to be included alongside the curated exhibition. GESTE Paris will purchase at least one of these six works to be added to the GESTE permanent art collection. The Open Call section of the exhibition receives submissions from all over the world and provides an opportunity to showcase new artists’ work that has not gotten the exposure it deserves.
Beyond the exhibition itself there is a program for artist, curator and expert-led private tours and events which will take place tOctober through December 2022.
The 2021 edition of GESTE Paris, Future Conditional
defines the theme according to its relationship to Art, Language and Philosophy. A collective artistic reaction to what lies ahead is both cathartic and prophetic in its reflection. This 5th edition will include both a physical online edition with an edge to accessible photographic works in which proceeds will not only benefit the artists but a selection of charitable entities in Paris.
GESTE Paris is pleased to announce the 4th edition group show, from November 1st to November 30th, dedicated to the photographic and filmic «gesture» as coined by philosopher Vilém Flusser, a recognized place of discovery and meeting of established and emerging artists from all over the world. Curated by artist Shiva Lynn Burgos and Dominique Charlet GESTE 2019 centered on the theme:
<<The Truth In Disguise>>
The Truth in Disguise, has many facets. The image can be a pretense in the conceptual or physical sense. One can alter, arrange, conceal, camouflage, recompose, counterfeit, dress, cover, decorate, disfigure, deform, denature, disillusion, conceal, coat, wrap, distort, invent, manipulate, collage, redact, silence, transform, veil … the «reality» of objects, situations, people and ways of seeing. How can our perceptions be affected by techniques that hide or alter?
In the era of reality TV and false information, the selfie culture and the virtual identities of social media and gaming, artificial intelligence and political propaganda, how is the truth disguised or revealed?
Visual media of 20+ artists including: Idris Khan, The Mariwai Project, Christer Strömholm, Laia Abril, Naomi B. Cook, Nicole Cohen, John Stezaker, Yuken Teruya, Joan Fontcuberta, Tom Lovelace, Andreas Gursky, Sebastiaan Bremer, David Young, C. Javier Barrera, Marina Abramovič & Ulay
The 2019 theme will resonate through various media such as photographic prints, video, sculpture and performance with a focus on unique works exhibited for the first time.
Exhibition dates November 5 – December 2, 2018
Vernissage Monday, Novermber 5th from 18h30
GESTE Paris 2018 presents photo based artwork and video for its third forthcoming exhibition Binary / Non-Binary opening in November 2018. Curators for Binary / Non-Binary are Shiva Lynn Burgos(US/France), GeorgBak(Switzerland) and Alisa Phommaxahay(France/Laos) including, for the first time an open call selection by an exceptional jury.
Black or white, on or off, male or female, digital or analog, zero or one. A binary viewpoint divides the world cleanly and everything is in one category or the other, as two alternatives existing in opposition. The non-binary viewpoint opens the world up to a multiplicity of categories, rejecting the simplification and contrasting nature of the binary position and yet must include both the single and the infinite.
How do artists exemplify these concepts today and how do they co-exist?
Where does the spectrum lie in terms of scientifically definable code, blockchain, digital geometry, astrometrics, consciousness, gender, sexuality, spirituality, artificial intelligence and the technological singularity?
Notable artists include Constantin Brancusi, Frederick Sommer, Pierre Molinier, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Ned & Shiva Productions, Francis Ruyter, Olaf Nicolai, Ghost of a Dream, Zean Cabangis, CJ Heyliger, Susan Morris, Nicolas Schöffer, Samra Habib, Quentin Houdas, Gianfranco Caravacci, Martin Déselets, Vera Molnar, John Watkinson
<<Photographic Materiality>>
GESTE Paris was pleased to announce its second edition, Photographic Materiality, an underground exhibition of experimental photography organised by Marc Lenot, Georg Bak and Shiva Lynn Burgos from the 6th november to the 9th december. GESTE brings together vintage and contemporary works by both established and emerging artists. Like a secret speakeasy GESTE is presented in the convivial setting of a classic Parisian apartment that provides a space for reflection and dialogue. GESTE is the nexus of a private collection, artwork from leading galleries, and a selection by an author and critic’s eye.
Artists include:
Driss Aroussi, Sylvie Bonnot, Juliana Borinski, Marco Breuer, Chris Bucklow, Fanny Béguély, Shiva Lynn Burgos, Pierre Cordier et Gundi Falk, Raphaël Dallaporta, Susan Derges, Garry Fabian Miller, Joan Fontcuberta, Herbert W. Franke, Adam Fuss, Hein Gravenhorst, Heinz Hajek-Halke, Heinrich Heidersberger, Karl Martin Holzhäuser, Gottfried Jäger, Tatiana Kronberg, Maureen McQuillan, Sebastian Riemer, Thomas Ruff, Pierre Savatier, Nicolas Schöffer, Paula de Solminihac, Jean-Pierre Sudre, Wolfgang Tillmans, Manon Wertenbroek
<<GESTE>> 2016
On the occasion of the 20th edition of Paris Photo we present GESTE an underground photo based exhibition that brings together vintage works alongside contemporary and experimental photographic practices by both established and emerging artists.
GESTE is presented in the convivial and domestic setting of a Haussmanian apartment. Curated by Shiva Lynn Burgos and Hailey Widrig, GESTE investigates the concept of the photographic gesture in its various interpretations and sensibilities to initiate and carry out an action, a physical technique, an emotion, an artistic ideal.
Invited artists include Samuel Boutruche, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Marco Breuer, Erich Hartmann, Sara Lucas, Man Ray, Matt Mathurin, Daido Moriyama, Ned&ShivaProductions, Frank Perrin, Andres Serrano, David Shrigley, Gavin Turk and more.
GESTE is the first of these Paris based projects by Shiva Lynn Burgos building on similar underground collaborative and renegade projects in New York, Berlin, London, Miami, Venice and Papua New Guinea .
Photography is the ideal medium for capturing the fleeting gesture and rendering it permanent in the manner of the decisive moment of Cartier-Bresson. The Alvarez-Bravo, Halsman and the Mahurin works are in this classic tradition. Roland Barthes put this approach into a more critical context in Camera Lucida (1980) when he wrote, “I imagine that the essential gesture of the photographer is to surprise something or someone through the little hole in the camera.”
Contemporary photographers have moved beyond this to pose or fabricate their own scenes; Coventry, Shrigley and Perrin are examples of this. Rosalind E. Kraus wrote, “By exposing the multiplicity, the facticity, the repetition and stereotype at the heart of every aesthetic gesture, photography deconstructs the possibility of differentiating between the original and the copy.” The search for the real amongst the artificial is at the heart of this post-modern approach.
There is however in every photograph the gesture behind the camera, that of the photographer.The geste photographique lies at the heart of Flusser’s philosophy of photography. “The photographer’s gesture, as the search for a viewpoint onto a scene, takes place within the possibilities offered by the apparatus.” he wrote in Towards a Theory of Techno-Imagination (1980).
Heidelberg is a photographer who extended the possibilities of the photographic apparatus and set in motion a light pendulum and his work is a pure record of this gesture. Hartman makes a similar gesture with the laser light played upon his daughter. Breuer and Yokata each make gestures which push the bounds of photographic apparatus beyond its limits; Breuer using a sling to shoot screws at photographic paper and Yokota directly chemically altering the film.
When the artist turns the camera on themselves we have a doubling of these gestures. We find this here in the works of Turk, Lucas and Ned&ShivaProductions, a complex interplay between the gesture made in front of the camera and the gesture made behind.
The Serrano is perhaps the most layered of works within this critique. The homoerotic statue, a cheap copy of a copy of the lost original, is frozen in a gesture and now captured forever bathed in the golden glow of the artists urine.
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