System of Culture｜Exhibit 7 “Phantom”

LAG is pleased to announce the exhibition, Exhibit 7 “Phantom” by System of Culture from Friday, October 11, 2024 to Saturday, November 2, 2024.
System of Culture started its activities in 2017, creating and presenting photographic works that “conversion of the image” based on the images and theories referred to and obtained from the vast amount of content on social media inundated with image data, paintings, and movies. They treat equal value as a single image, including net memes, AI-generated images, traditional still-life paintings, and even a scene from personal life in the past moment, and based on those, they transform into works with new visuals. Despite them all being constructed arbitrarily, at a glance, their atmosphere seems to be scenes from daily life. Because of this, all viewers can evoke from the works have contents or narratives or the relationship between the image and image with each other, so the viewers can find the features of artists that they willingly use the nature of the photographs, and they always ask its reasons for existence.
 
The new work “Phantom,” on view for the first time in this exhibition, explores the cyclical relationship between reality and information through media.
 
The photograph creates a virtual cube by using the procedure of perspective drawing. Although this exists as an illusion, taking a picture of the box and its contents and displaying it on the surface of the same box at the same size, by doing so, the viewers recognize the object in the box as if it were an actual substance. When the virtual is mistakenly perceived as an entity and acts as if it were real, the materiality of the print itself dilutes and becomes transparent. The picture is physically there, but its existence will change like a transparent filter. This process of transparency further blurs the boundaries between virtual and reality and promotes their circulation. It is also similar to the modern social structure in which the media reflects real life and influences real life conversely, which circulates self-referentially while mutually reflecting each other.