Katja Novitskova presents ‘Invasion Curves’ in Gallery 2

Katja Novitskova: Invasion Curves
27 June – 2 September 2018
Gallery 2
Free Entry
#InvasionCurves

3 May 2018 – Installation artist Katja Novitskova (b. 1984, Tallinn) presents an immersive environment at the Whitechapel Gallery, offering an unsettling vision of the future.

Novitskova’s work focuses on issues of technology, evolutionary processes and ecological realities. It explores the materiality and circulation of images – how they are used, recycled and re-contextualised. She is known for her dramatic, cut-out images of animals, presented alongside imagery drawn from financial and scientific sources.

Using elements from her acclaimed presentation at the Estonian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2017, her installation at Whitechapel Gallery will feature sculptural cut-out figures alongside humanlike baby-rockers, mobiles and projections. The work imagines a landscape overcome by a ‘biotic crisis’, ecologically impacted by humans, where imaging and technology are used in a process of mapping the exploitation of life.

Her installation will show images captured by scanners, cameras and satellites or rendered by image processing algorithms, displayed as vivid sculptures, and projections.

Worms defy gravity and genetically modified life forms hatch from eggs among a tangled undergrowth of cables. At the heart of the exhibition, the modified baby-rockers gyrate eerily. Surrounding this unsettling landscape, floating resin clouds are inscribed with phrases speculating on the impact of global data on our consciousness and the environment.

Growth curves, derived from corporate culture, echoed in the forms of the worms and cables, offer a wry comment on humanity’s drive towards advancement in the name of profit.

Throughout, the human body is eerily absent from the installation, replaced by stand-ins who attempt to lull the viewer into a false sense of security in the hands of technology.

Notes to Editors

-Katja Novitskova was born in 1984 in Tallinn, Estonia. She lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin.

-Recent solo exhibitions include: If Only You Could See What I’ve Seen with Your Eyes, Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, 2018; CC Foundation & Art Centre, Shanghai; If Only You Could See What I’ve Seen With Your Eyes, 57th Venice Biennale, Estonian Pavilion, Venice; Earth Potential, City Hall Park, Public Art Fund, New York, 2017; Approximation (Storm Time), Greene Naftali, New York; Dawn Mission, Kunstverein Hamburg, Hamburg, 2016; Life Update, Kunsthalle Lisbon, Lisbon, 2015; Art Basel Hong Kong, 2015; Pattern of Activation, Art Basel Statements, Basel; Green Growth, Salts, Basel; Spirit, Curiosity and Opportunity, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin; Urgently “Yesterday”, Mottahedan Projects, Dubai, 2014; miart, Milan, 2013; Macro Expansion, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin, 2012; Appendix, Portland; Hotel Palenque, French Riviera, London; Katja Novitskova and Timur Si-Qin, CCS Bard, Annadaleon-Hudson, New York; #8 Health Club, Czarny Neseser, Wrocław, Poland; Profit | Decay, Arcadia Missa, London, 2012; sunny n shiiite, The State, thestate.tumblr.com, 2011.

-Curators: The exhibition is curated by Emily Butler, Mahera and Mohammad Abu Ghazaleh Curator, Whitechapel Gallery with Cameron Foote, Assistant Curator, Whitechapel Gallery.

-Exhibition Design: Chris Aldgate, Head of Exhibition Design & Production, Whitechapel Gallery.

-Artist Installation Design: Katja Novitskova with support from Victor Wang, independent curator. Sound composition by Kareem Lotfy.

-Generously supported by Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center as part of the Republic of Estonia Centenary celebrations.

Visitor Information

Admission: Free
Opening times: Tuesday – Sunday, 11am – 6pm; Thursdays, 11am – 9pm
Whitechapel Gallery, 77 – 82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX
Nearest London Underground Stations: Aldgate East, Liverpool Street, Tower Gateway DLR
T + 44 (0) 20 7522 7888 | E info@whitechapelgallery.org | W whitechapelgallery.org

Press Information

For more information, interviews and images, contact:

Lucy Hawes, Senior Media Relations Manager
T +44 (0)20 7522 7871 | E lucyhawes@whitechapelgallery.org

Bridie Hindle, Media Relations Assistant
T + 44 (0)20 7539 3360 | E bridiehindle@whitechapelgallery.org

Press Release - Katja Novitskova: Invasion Curves (PDF)