LoVid

Postmasters is pleased to present our first solo exhibition with LoVid.

Titled “Hold On,” the show will present a series of digital tapestries and NFTs. Both are spatial and time-based compositions that translate interaction with human gesture into two fundamentally different formats.

LoVid is well known for recorded videos and live performances, where the audiovisual landscapes of moving image and sound are created through custom-built analog synthesizers. The hands-on process itself involves connecting lots of cables, twisting knobs, and flipping switches to make and mix RGB colors forming shapes, patterns, and rhythms. The imagery from the videos and performances is often transformed into digitally produced fabric that comprises costumes, merch, installations, clothing, collages, and sculptures.

For this exhibition, the tapestries and the NFTs were created simultaneously. Both constitute LoVid’s “Hugs on Tape” series.

The tapestries are dynamic still objects. They enable time expansion with frozen moments as the video-synthesizer-born forms and colors are copied, pasted, flipped, and repeated to a looping visual effect. The compositions are in dialogue with traditional patterns of decorative and textile arts. Instead of elements from the natural world, images generated by the electronic instrument act as parallel to nature/humanity/wood/Lincoln Logs in the digital/technological/blockchain/cyborg age.

LoVid's tapestries - sown, patched and embroidered - are the physical manifestations of digital experiences. They ride the waves of tension between material and media while expanding the screen and internet-based spaces. Traditional fabric arts, including weaving and sewing, have a deep historical connection to programming, engineering, and early computers. The new tapestries in “Hold On” are inspired by a patchwork of storyboards (drawn images as cinematic storytelling), video dance (bodies moving inside a frame), and traditional crafts (symbolism, myths, folklore, vegetation patterns).

LoVid's NFTs - “Hugs on Tape” videos - are of the moment.

The series started in the dark depths of the pre-vaccine pandemic lockdown. Yearning to feel close to far away friends and family, LoVid asked them for short videos of hugs. These were then animated using raw video footage from over 20 years of LoVid recordings.

“Dressing” their bodies in our video patterns showered these friends with love since LoVid’s video patterns are like raw emotions, non-verbal communication channels carried by electricity. Hugs are also a response to endless images of solitude and selfies across social media and NFT platforms, an act of togetherness.

—LoVid

LoVid continues the “Hugs on Tape” series as both NFT animations and tapestries. The hugs are filled with generosity, humor, fragility, tenderness, and love. They animate and eternalize the choreography of the quotidian, of spontaneous contacts. Hugs are enveloping and bring bursts of joy. They give comfort, hope, physical stimulation, and reassurance during particularly unstable and uncertain times.

LoVid was established in 2001 as a collaboration between artists Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus.

Their work has been exhibited internationally including among others: Honor Fraser Gallery, Postmasters, And/Or Gallery, Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, Real Art Ways, BRIC, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Mixed Greens Gallery, The Science Gallery Dublin, The Jewish Museum, Daejeon Museum, Smack Mellon, Netherland Media Art Institute, New Museum, and ICA London.

LoVid has performed in venues including: The Parrish Museum, Issue Project Room, River to River Festival, Lampo Chicago, Tectonics Festival, Museum of the Moving Image, MoMA, The Kitchen, Siskel Theater Chicago, and International Film Festival Rotterdam.

LoVid’s projects have received awards, residencies, and grants support from: Wave Hill, NY Hall of Science, The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Graham Foundation, UC Santa Barbara, Signal Culture, Cue Art Foundation, Eyebeam, Harvestworks, Wave Farm, Rhizome, Franklin Furnace, Turbulence.org, New York Foundation for the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Center, Experimental TV Center, NY State Council of the Arts, and Greenwall Foundation.

Their work has been reviewed at Art in America, The New Yorker, Bmore Art, Hyperallergic, Garage, and NYLON, and published in, Handmade Electronic Music (third edition), Emergence of Video Processing Tools, PAJ (Journal for Performance And Art), Maker Magazine, Leonardo Music, among others.