Strata #4 – Excerpt 1 from Quayola on Vimeo.
Strata #4 is a multi-channel immersive video-installation commissioned by Palais de Beaux Arts in Lille. The subject of this work is a series of iconic pieces from the museum’s Flemish collection, focusing specifically on Rubens’ and Van Dyck’s grand altarpieces. Strata #4 is the result of a study and exploration of the paintings themselves, delving beneath their figurative appearance and looking at the very rules behind the composition, colour schemes and proportions of each piece. It is a precise process aimed at creating new contemporary images based on universal rules of beauty and perfection. Documenting the improbable collisions between classical figuration and contemporary abstraction, Strata #4 aims to create an harmonious dialogue between worlds that may appear very distant from one another, but in fact share so much in common. -Quayola-
Forms (process) from Quayola on Vimeo.
An ongoing collaboration between visuals artists Memo Akten and Quayola
Forms is a series of studies on human motion, and its reverberations through space and time. It is inspired by the works of Eadweard Muybridge, Harold Edgerton, Étienne-Jules Marey as well as similarly inspired modernist cubist works such as Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase No.2″. Rather than focusing on observable trajectories, it explores techniques of extrapolation to sculpt abstract forms, visualizing unseen relationships – power, balance, grace and conflict – between the body and its surroundings.
The project investigates athletes; pushing their bodies to their extreme capabilities, their movements shaped by an evolutionary process targeting a winning performance. Traditionally a form of entertainment in todays society with an overpowering competitive edge, the disciplines are deconstructed and interrogated from an exclusively mechanical and aesthetic point of view; concentrating on the invisible forces generated by and influencing the movement. The source for the study is footage from the Commonwealth Games. The process of transformation from live footage to abstract forms is exposed as part of the interactive multi-screen artwork, to provide insight into the evolution of the specially crafted world in which the athletes were placed. -Quayola-
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