There are two dimensions of reality, the “virtual” and the “actual” – virtuality is a part of reality, and the access to the abstract dimension of reality is based on the enhancement of our concrete existence. In other words, while the entire world moves towards virtuality, matter proliferates correlatively.
This exhibition aims to examine the juxtaposition of the social and ecological crises caused by the technological overproduction in the digital age with its increase due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital trashes invade the actual space to keep the virtual space running, while labors produce the entire postmodern apparatus in poor conditions. We want to highlight the ethical aspect of virtuality.
Hardware acts as a medium to visualize the virtual, but beyond its function, it is a material and concrete device, that allows us to explore the immaterial and the abstract, by being anchored to the present. Data, whether stored on hardware or on the cloud, always require a material and concrete medium.
In addition, organic memory will always rely on a substratum, just as digital memory does. Memory and dreams are also virtual realms that precede the digital.
The works exhibited at “The Virtual Concreteness” used a visual language based on symbolic motifs of virtuality to deal with these issues. From different perspectives, seven artists；Xing Danwen, Ishikawa Raita, Futoyu Masaharu, Jean-Baptiste Lenglet, Matsuzawa Yutaka, Zoé Schellenbaum and Hanaoka Mio, presented the polysemy and the complexity of virtuality.