Lemmerz + McCarthy New Media Art (Virtual reality)

In the art world this medium is entering a groundbreaking period of creating and experiencing art. Khora Contemporary, a platform solely dedicated to virtual art (VR) created as a bridge between artists and Virtual Reality developers, collaborated with Paul McCarthy and Christian Lemmerz, the predecessors within the field, to produce astonishing new media works. Faurschou Foundation invites the visitor to enter new scenarios where the psychological and physical spheres overlap.

Paul McCarthy’s Virtual Reality experiment is based on the artist’s long-term project, “Coach Stage Stage Coach”, (“CSSC”). Encompassing a wide range of different media, the project includes a new film, inspired by John Ford’s Western of the same title from 1939, starring John Wayne. Taking the form of a spin-off, a phenomenon associated with the entertainment industry, the Virtual Reality work builds on a scene from the film by the artist, involving the two characters, Mary (played by Rachel Alig) and Eve (played by Jennifer Daley). Caught in the claustrophobia of constant surveillance by the two women and their doubles, the viewer becomes part of a vicious mind game. All social conventions break down as the plot unfolds and escalates into a psychosexual trip of rape and humiliation.

Paul McCarthy was born in 1945, in Salt Lake City, USA. Today he lives and works in California. He received his BFA in painting from San Francisco Art Institute, and received his MFA at the University of Southern California, where he studied film, video, and art. From 1982 to 2002, he taught performance, video, installation, and performance art history at the University of California, Los Angeles. McCarthy's works include performance, installation, film, and other genres, best known for their highly provocative nature. McCarthy’s works often express strong criticism towards consumerism in American culture, symbolized by Disneyland, B-Movies, Soap Operas and Comics. His performance art and psychosexual events aim to test the emotional limits of both artist and viewer. His work has been shown in the 1993 Venice Biennale and in exhibitions at Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), The Guggenheim Museum Soho (New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), and Musee d'Art Contemporain (Lausanne, Switzerland), among many others.

Entering the virtual reality of Lemmerz’s La Apparizione, one encounters the “Crucified One.” A golden, tortured body, released from the cross and floating in absolute darkness, his wounds revealing flesh and blood behind the glistening, metal surface of his skin. Exposed to the viewer through the extreme visuality of the VR medium is a fusion between the suffering “Saviour” and a bodybuilder, bordering on vulgarity. In this space, between pathos and irony, between fake and real, the Silver Surfer and Jesus Christ, the bodily event of death is endured – this death that we live.

Christian Lemmerz was born in Germany in 1959. Today he lives and works in Denmark and Italy. From 1978 to 1982, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara, Italy, and from 1983 to 1988 at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Lemmerz expresses himself in a variety of media, from film, performance, sculpture, drawing, painting, to installation works. Lemmerz has explored highly unconventional materials, such as his early organic sculptures made of margarine, or a work consisting of slaughtered pigs exhibited in glass cases. He also works with traditional materials, ranging from bronze to marble. Many of Lemmerz’s works focus on taboo-related themes, taken from contemporary, as well as historical events, where suffering, death, identity, and existence are central themes. The human body and the medium of sculpture have been particularly important to Lemmerz’s work, enabling the viewer to become an active participant. Lemmerz has had major solo exhibitions at Randers Art Museum (Denmark), SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Aros (Aarhus Art Museum, Denmark), Cisternerne (Copenhagen, Denmark), and has exhibited in Stavanger, Beijing, New York and Sao Paulo.