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Joe Stevens

Experiments in Utopia

10 until 16 March 2010

PV: 9 March, 7 - 9pm

Daily Performances, 5 - 6pm

Tenderpixel Gallery is pleased to host a week of performance and experimentation by Joe Stevens. Gallery visitors may venture into the research space that will be known as Experiments in Utopia. Participants are invited to utilise the information files found within the gallery in order to carry out their own personal Cube of Art determined cultural journey within London. 

In response to the overload of today’s cultural and lifestyle choices, Stevens’ Cube of Art encourages its users towards a less biased engagement with the arts. The built cubes contain various symbols representing fragments of instructions for a particular cultural journey, details for which can be found within the Window of Information legend (an interpretation tool that exists in the gallery). The symbolic fragments are meant to be re-configured into groups in order to create a Cube of Art, a personalised cultural catalyst device. Visitors can use the tape, pens and pencils and create their own cube, or they can create an instruction card to contribute a section of a cube for someone else’s journey.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Stevens will be enacting Performances in Utopia. These performances will take place daily from 5-6pm and will rotate the following themes: comedy, dance, food & drink, games, music, theatre; while adhering to these constraints: maximum of 6 shapes, maximum of 6 numbers, maximum of 6 colours, maximum of 6 days, maximum of 6 directions, maximum of 6 genres. Stevens will also be exclusively performing Window of Information (Cube of Art Readings) on the evenings of the 12th and 13th, a special set of events held in collaboration with Propeller Island: The Gossipy Guide

Joe Stevens is London-based artist. He is an MA graduate of Goldsmiths and an artist concerned with the grid as a methodology for artistic production. Placing certain restrictions means it is easier for him to focus on what is relevant and important. His grid exists by and for itself, with the ontological assertion that its structure is without precedent, extending in all directions to infinity. He uses the grid to provide structure to his life and art and to provide freedom from sensory overload.