Artist
Vishal Shah

Electronic Music Composer
Dr. Adam Stanovic

Collaborative Team
Jakob Kienzerle
Dave Goodall
Rick Schubert
Serge Castro

Presenting: It Might Blow Up, But It Won’t Go Pop

An exhibition from multidisciplinary artist Vishal Shah, collaborating with a creative production team, exploring the powerful and irreconcilable tension between commercial advertising and fine art. Using an audio video installation playing on a loop, communicative languages warp, design is beautifully abstracted but blocked and concepts are made to jar.

The film abstracts the many signs and symbols of corporate advertising, social communication from their natural context, and observe s them as art. In some cases, the beauty remains, in others meaning is obscured, significance is lost, disruption takes president and surfaces are played upon. This tension is profound; it is a powerful tension within, swinging precariously between a wish to resolve and a need to scream. It Might Blow Up, But It Won't Go Pop is a piece of work that is poised on this very delicate point.

The title of the exhibition is taken from the looped lyric in De La Soul’s third album ‘ Buhloone Mindstate ’ released in Sept. 1993. The hookline "it might blow up, but it won't go pop" is repeated over and over, until the sound of a balloon popping replaces the final word "pop" - the hope of expanding their artistic popularity, without selling out.

The Collaboration

Vishal Shah met Dr. Adam Stanović, composer of electronic music, in London in late 2004. Since that time, Stanovic has won numerous prestigious prizes, mentions residencies, for his music, but always finds time to collaborate with Shah on film- based projects. To date, the collaboration has produced three internationally successful films that have toured the world, being screened at over 50 different film festivals, academic institutions, and public galleries. Part of this success lies in their unique blend of different media, which combine electroacoustic music and sound design with moving images and digital art. Their resulting works are, subsequently, more akin to “ visual music ”, with both sound and image fused into an organic whole. They have developed novel creative methods in which together they speak with one, unified, artistic voice. Their work has received many reviews over the years, with one writer referring to the work as “formidable - surprising, shocking and impressive” .

Filmography: Seek Assistance / Pollen / Epoh

A Film To Break Down Walls

Consisting of the entire canvas of the city of Berlin, as seen through the eyes of a camera lens, It Might Blow Up, But It Won’ t Go Pop coincides with the celebration of the 30-year anniversary of the Berlin wall coming down this November. The city now reflects a fusion of commerce and creative expression: young, challenging, progressive.

Timely and universal in its expansive subject matter, this new piece of work reflects the push-and-pull tension between fine art and advertising, exploring the necessary and positive ways in which they continually inform one another. The film explores themes of dependency traversing between the two forms, and mirrors the search for coherence that most artists and commercial artists strive for throughout their careers. Focusing on societal compartmentalizing and categorizing that leads to inevitable tension and the pressure to conform, a constant stream of fragmented, compelling, juxtaposed imagery and sound, shows us that we do not need to conform – that walls are there to be broken down, and ideas and expressions can be shared fluidly.

For Shah this realization that each form cannot completely survive without the other, is the creative force. Fine art demands to be seen and in order to do this, needs to be advertised, while advertising consistently looks toward art for influence, or to hijack ideas that meet the demand of its audience. This duality can be unified and celebrated. This necessary and relevant film strives to bring expression, and the work, to its highest peak where the two forms are unified. Commercial advertising and fine art living as one in a unified world.

Limited Edition Prints

Left:
Keeping It Real
Hahnemühle German etching paper
Fine art print on 310 g/qm
59 cm x 71 cm
Edition: 25

Right:
Won't Go Pop
Hahnemühle German etching paper
Fine art print on 310 g/qm
59 cm x 71 cm
Edition: 25

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