Refik Anadol Pittsburgh Wood Street Galleries January 25, 2019

SHOW TITLE: Refik Anadol
ARTIST: Refik Anadol
CURATOR: Murray Horne

Infinity Room — DATALAND
By Refik Anadol, 2019
4 Channel Projectors
4 Channel Sound
Custom Software and Hardware

Los Angeles, CA (January 15, 2019) – Refik Anadol Studio’s worldwide traveling installation, Infinity Room, opens at Pittsburgh’s Wood Street Galleries on Friday, January 25, 2019. Wood Street Galleries is a leading New Media gallery in the U.S. featuring computer related artwork since 1996, and part of the revitalized Cultural District in downtown Pittsburgh overseen by The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. Free and open to the public, Infinity Room at Wood Street Galleries can be experienced Wednesday through Sunday. No reservations are needed.

Infinity Room is an immersive experience conceived by award-winning artist Refik Anadol utilizing contemporary algorithms, moving projections, light, sound, and mirrors. The audio/visual installation induces a state of consciousness in which the subject’s awareness of physical self is transformed by being surrounded by an all encompassing environment, creating a perception of presence in a non-physical world. Infinity Room transforms the conventional flat cinema projection screen into a three dimensional and seemingly infinite space, blurring the boundaries between actual/fictional and physical/virtual.

“I see Infinity Room as a means of escape to a new dimension,” Anadol comments,“ an opportunity to be temporarily released from our habitual perceptions and culturally biased assumptions, to enable us, however momentarily, to freshly perceive ourselves and the world around us.”

Infinity Room opened in 2015 in Istanbul, Turkey, and has traveled worldwide, with stops at SXSW in Austin, Texas, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Arts, and the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Over a million people have experienced Anadol’s Infinity Room, which Vice described as “a room that looks like you’ve just stepped into some kind of otherworldly portal or cosmic gateway, as the swirls, curls, and linear forms cause the walls to melt away.” In 2017, Infinity Room was awarded Excellent Communications Design for Audiovisual Experience by The German Design Award.

Infinity Room is generously supported by Epson, the number one selling projector brand worldwide.

Infinity Room World Tour

2019:

The ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, GERMANY – June 4, 2019

Artechouse, New York, NY, USA – May 1, 2019

Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburgh, PA, USA – January 25, 2019

2018:

SMoCA, Scottsdale, AZ, USA

Kaneko Museum, Omaha, NE, USA Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA, USA

New Zealand Festival, Wellington, NEW ZEALAND

.zip_Future of Today, Shanghai, CHINA

.zip_Future of Today, Suzhou, CHINA

.zip_Future of Today, Chengdu, CHINA

InfoComm, BRASIL

InfoComm, COLUMBIA

InfoComm, MEXICO

2017:

SXSW, Austin, TX, USA

ADAF, Athens, GREECE

ME Convention, Frankfurt, GERMANY

Today Art Museum, Beijing, CHINA

2016:

InfoComm, Las Vegas, NV, USA

Irisations, Aix-en-Provence, FRANCE

Maison des Arts de Créteil, Créteil, FRANCE

Mapping Festival, Geneva, SWITZERLAND

tagCDMX, Mexico City, MEXICO

2015:

Zorlu PSM, Istanbul, TURKEY

Day for Night Festival, Houston, TX, USA

More About Refik Anadol

Refik Anadol is a media artist and director born in Istanbul, Turkey. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California, where he owns and operates Refik Anadol Studio. Anadol is a lecturer and researcher for UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts where he obtained a master of fine arts degree.

As a spatial thinker, Anadol is intrigued by the ways in which the digital age requires rethinking of a new aesthetic technique and dynamic perception of space. Embedding media arts into architecture, he questions the possibility of a post digital architectural future in which there are no more non-digital realities. Anadol faces all the new challenges that the gradual development of an enriched immersive environment and ubiquitous computing impose on human kind. His body of work explores how perception and experience of time and space are radically changing now that machines have all but colonized our everyday lives.

Refik Anadol is the recipient of a number of awards and prizes including Microsoft Research’s Best Vision Award, German Design Award, UCLA Art+Architecture Moss Award, University of California Institute for Research in the Arts Award, SEGD Global Design Awards, and Google’s Art and Machine Intelligence Artist Residency Award. His site-specific audio/visual performances have been featured at iconic landmarks, museums and festivals worldwide, such as Walt Disney Concert Hall, Hammer Museum, International Digital Arts Biennial Montreal, Ars Electronica Festival , l’Usine | Genève, Arc De Triomf, Zollverein | SANAA’s School of Design Building, santralistanbul Contemporary Art Center, Outdoor Vision Festival, Istanbul Design Biennial, Sydney City Art, and Lichtrouten, among many others.

Website | refikanadol.com

Instagram | instagram.com/refikanadol

Twitter | twitter.com/refikanadol

Vimeo | vimeo.com/refo