Cory Arcangel, Michael Dean, Jota Mombaća, Tiffany Sia, Kazuyuki Takezaki

August 30, 2024

Weather or Not

Jota Mombaça’s until the last morning (2023) cap- tures the delicate balance of life in the mangroves
and swamps of Pará in the Brazilian Amazon. These wetlands, spanning approximately 700,000 hectares, rely on a constant supply of fresh water from rainfall and the rivers of Guajará Bay. Mangroves are vital to the ecosystem, serving as nurseries for marine life, protecting shorelines from erosion, and acting as natural barriers against storms. In Mombaça’s film, the camera ascends to the sky, meticulously tracking cloud formations and their shifting patterns. The survival of the mangroves—and, by extension, the broader ecosystem—depends on this unpredictable choreogra- phy of weather. Thus, observing the weather becomes a means of predicting whether this fragile continuity can extend into the future.

Kazuyuki Takezaki’s (1976-2024) landscape paintings are slightly blurred, reduced to a minimal color pal- ette, and rendered so flat and two-dimensional that they transform the landscape into abstract forms and back again. His works, simply titled Double Negative (all 2024), may also reference Michael Heizer’s land art piece of two opposite trenches, in which 244,000 tons of earth were excavated in the Nevada desert, USA. In Takezaki’s work, two mountain peaks, slightly offset in the background, face the sky and landscape. As night falls or the sky darkens, these elements merge into one as the colors converge. Takezaki was inspired by the mountains in Marugame, Kagawa Prefecture, which he saw as protective elements shielding the city from rain and wind, preventing the streets from being flooded.

Tiffany Sia’s A Wet Finger in the Air (2021), a sin- gle-channel video, assembles appropriated footage
of bilingual weather reports from 1980s to 1997-era Hong Kong TVB and Pearl broadcasting stations into a hypnotic, randomized loop that repeats every hour. While these reels might invoke nostalgia, Sia’s focus is on using atmospheric and weather changes as a meta- phor for the similarly unpredictable and slippery turns of history. The artist metaphorically raises a wet finger in the air to gauge the invisible direction of the times.

Although sculpture is one of Michael Dean’s primary mediums, language and text are foundational to his individual works and sometimes entire exhibitions. Dean uses language as a fragment and an act—akin to a speech act—that is not only a statement but also an action. In Weather or Not, he created a mural on the walls of Santozeum, repeatedly inscribing words from the floor up to the height where the artist’s reach was halted. The text reads:

SHORED SHORES SHORE SHORED SHORING SHORES SHORING SHORES SHORED SHORES SHORE SHORED SHORING SHORES SHORING SHORES SHORED SHORES SHORE SHORED SHORING SHORES SHORING SHORES SHORED SHORES SHORE SHORED SHORING SHORES SHORING SHORES SHORED SHORES SHORE

Michael Dean uses language in a reductive manner, where a single phrase conveys the message of an entire book—corrupted yet recognizable. The disappearing shore shortens and fades into an endless ocean of kisses.

Cory Arcangel’s currentmood (2016) is a sound work or composition where the artist side-chained white noise against a 909 kick drum. The work reflects Ar- cangel’s ongoing interest in the technological explo- ration of obsession and obsolescence. What might initially seem like disturbing and monotonous noise gradually evolves into myriad sounds: the wind, the sea, an eternal roar, all underpinned by a rhythm reminiscent of the party island culture of Santorini— though more like a relic from a bygone era.

The works featured in Weather or Not are intercon- nected, much like the weather that connects us all, yet also fragmented, mirroring how weather disrupts our attempts to predict the present and future. A coherent poetic sensibility runs through the exhibition, which served as the starting point for its curation. The artists, who hail from South and North America, Europe, and Japan, bring diverse perspectives that resonate with the exhibition‘s theme. Santorini, the exhibition’s location, is an island shaped by a volcanic eruption in the 1600 BC. Today, it is populated by tourists from around the world, drawn by its favorable weather and famous sunsets.

Welcome to Santorini.