Redefining found-object art
By Farah Amin
Leo Gabin are mainly interested in how American pop culture is filtered and interpreted through online viewing and how young people use the media to capture their surroundings and express themselves. The imagery that is used not only evoke feelings of despair and sadness as well as joy and hope.
Last July (2014), Leo Gabin exhibited their paintings and films in White Cube art gallery in London. They featured a new two-part film on the ground floor called A Crackup at the Race Riots (2013-14) based on a 1998 novel by Harmony Korine. The film is set in Florida and has images of abandoned houses and empty malls that contrasting with the glorious weather and ‘happy’ places like Disneyland with a soundtrack of remixed pop tunes. The film highlights the realities and hardships of the American dream.
In another room Leo Gabin have chosen furniture that are shown in amateur video-sharing sites such as a rear projection TV that was often used as a backdrop for self-shot dance routines in the early 2000s and covered the floor in cheap carpet and resin patio chairs. The installation stirs up ideas and questions about both the realities of internet and the foreign interpretation of the ‘American life’.
In the lower ground floor of the gallery, there is a series of silk-screened and spray-painted canvases that represent images gathered from online footage that upset the clear narrative and create parallels between activities of making art and surfing the internet.
The trio has worked together since 2000. They received their BFA’s at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Ghent, Belgium, where they were all born in and where they continue to live and work.
