De: Formal Gallery and Constanza Valenzuela are pleased to present an online exhibition of new video works by eight emerging artists. The selection of videos explores a new kind of subjectivity, pairing humor and playfulness with social critique and the persistent questioning of existing values and hierarchies.
The artists in this exhibition subvert common archetypes with a surreal and playful tone, distorting the familiar in order to comment on pressing social and political crises such as exploitative labor practices, a critique of language from a new materialist perspective, the persistence of colonial racial stereotypes, and impending climate catastrophe. These videos offer no prescriptions to these problems, but by recontextualizing them in a subverted pastiche of older genres and forms, they surprise and challenge the expectations of viewers and insert the absurd into the dialogue around these issues.
These works celebrate fluidity and diversion while parodying the influence of Internet and videogame culture, documentary filmmaking, cartoons, and general broadcasting. The videos presented use humor as a vehicle to dive into an automated view of the present while looking forward to unknown, potentially dystopian futures. The works featured in The Equivalent Flow help us navigate the accelerated velocity and complexity of our digitally-networked present with contemplation and compassion.