FOUNDRY SEOUL is pleased to present Dream File, the first solo exhibition in Korea by Berlin-based artist Martin Gross. The exhibition takes place from July 21 to September 16, 2023. The exhibition consists of 12 new drawings, 2 site-specific animation video works, and a large-scale animated video, presenting a survey of Martin Gross’ artistic world where the artist creatively perceives various forms of information such as images, symbols, and sounds, and reconstructs them on an infinitely expanding screen.

Martin Gross began his work with architectural drawings in black and white. He has developed his own visual language, tone, and technique, expanding his artistic practice to include large-scale installations. Yet, drawing with the concept of ‘mapping’— representing the structure and information of a space on a flat surface—remains central to his practice. Gross’ work incorporates a wide range of motifs, including emojis, memes, text, and advertising slogans. Acting as non-verbal symbols, these are images captured and extracted by the artist from his surroundings. And they are separated and transformed from the existing context through editing, such as cut-up and montage techniques. Each element is recreated in a new context in a random arrangement of coincidences. In this process, the artist likens each element of the work to a kind of ‘hypertext,’ creating an endless narrative encompassing art history, internet culture, and pop culture by interweaving them on the screen. At the same time, the random combination of elements, each endowed with autonomous movement, proactively creates a new aesthetic structure in the process.

The title of the exhibition, Dream File, is borrowed from ‘dream file’—a term coined by Ted Nelson, who is known as the ‘father of the Internet,’ to describe the concept and principle of ‘hypertext.’ It is an homage to Nelson and also a clue to the artist’s oeuvre where the flow of interpretation is both autonomous and organic, according to the viewer’s gaze and personal experiences.

Gross visually depicts the experiences we go through today as we are bombarded with images, information, and patterns on his overloaded screen. At the same time, he places a number of demonstrative devices that allow the viewers to fall into their own space, just like the rabbit hole in Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865. The scattered images on the screen, overlaid with various online phenomena as well as fantastical imagery and emotional elements, are combined and expanded to be completed by the viewer’s experience in the end. As viewer wanders in meditation, replaying the dreamy screen of Night Forest (2023), the sunset of Grey Skies Turquoise Days (2023), and the title of Distant Lover (2023) conveys through its title, they arrive at the present that will one day become a strange, aimless longing like a long-forgotten song.

In Gross’ work, texts give rise to new ideas and concepts. However, it does not guarantee contextual validity or dictionary meaning. It is simply a transformation into an external representation that visually conveys the internal experience that the artist perceives creatively. Much So You Love I (2023) reverses the online abbreviation ‘ILYSM(I Love You So Much).’ The title highlights Gross’ approach to visual language. For him, the text is a material that has infinite possibilities to stand on its own as a lexicon, while at the same time being free of any inherent semantic or formal constraints. “ai fil laique kkkkkk,” which runs along the edge of the paper, also shows a purely auditory approach to representing “I feel like kkkkkk” with phonetic symbols. Even when we do not intuitively understand the inevitable errors that occur during the conversion process between text, image, and sound, new meanings emerge in the view of the artist and the viewers.

In Oh Sega Sunset (2023), a large-scale five-minute animated video work, there are texts that fill the seven-meter-high wall, morphing into various forms. They range from phrases written by the artist to lighthearted jokes. The strikingly vivid orange text against the black background is reminiscent of an advertising image designed to catch our attention, renewing the viewer’s relationship with the space. While the artist has been expanding his work into large-scale installations, Oh Sega Sunset (2023) is the artist’s first large-scale media installation, conveys new sensations through the relationship between image and text, text and sound, and sound and image. This large-scale work, which can be experienced visually and aurally from anywhere in the exhibition, generates new meanings and emotions through its connection with other works on display: Grey Skies Turquoise Days (2023) is placed on the opposite of Oh Sega Sunset (2023) to face it, and Much So You Love I (2023) is also a sentence that appears at the end of Oh Sega Sunset (2023).

In Time To Go (2023), the artist asks us through the mouth of the choir, “What is happening now?” The mysterious and ominous emojis screaming out remind us of 16th-century folio that tried to explain supernatural phenomena that tried to explain the world through religious beliefs and apocalyptic visions. These emojis resemble our 21st-century selves, with endless cycles of extreme pleasure and anxiety in images and information. Martin Gross’ playful works, which alternate between excitement and fear, joy and confusion, are placed in front of the viewers as a visionary ‘map’ of infinite possibilities: where we are now, where we are going, and where we can go.