Fukushima Texture Pack
Eva and Franco Mattes explore the ethical and moral issues that arise when people interact remotely, especially through social media.
Artist BioEva and Franco Mattes were invited by local artists and community organizers to make a new work, granting them access to the otherwise off-limits Fukushima Exclusion Zone. For Fukushima Texture Pack, they will photograph surfaces inside the Zone, both indoor and outdoor, including floors, tatami, walls, dirt, grass, pavements, desks and closets. Each photo will be turned into a digital, seamless texture, and distributed online, freely available for anyone to use. Their provenance will be clear. Mattes will then trace the photos’ online wanderings, collecting the outcomes of their manifold uses. The textures may be used by video game designers, architects, artists, scenographers and kids. They will be incorporated into new artworks and in the design of both commercial and independent productions. Possible distribution channels may include a ”Pantone-style” catalogue, which will give them a physical circulation as well. The project includes an installation of transparent plexiglass frames placed in the same locations where the photos were originally taken.
Eva and Franco Mattes present their project at the 2016 Creative Capital Retreat
Eva and Franco Mattes
Brooklyn, NY
Eva and Franco Mattes explore the ethical and moral issues that arise when people interact remotely, especially through social media. Through their installations the Mattes explore the dark spaces that are typically left alone out of fear: the unwanted, censored images of the internet, password-protected zones, and in the case of their Creative Capital project, Fukushima Texture Pack, nuclear sites.
Eva and Franco Mattes are Italian-born artists living and working in New York. Group exhibition highlights include SFMOMA, Athens Biennale, Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, and Whitechapel Gallery in London. The Mattes’s work has been written about in Artforum, Frieze Magazine, e-flux Journal, The New York Times, and The Guardian. They are faculty at the SVA MFA Fine Arts department.