Darja Popolitova at A-GALLERY

The exhibition ITOUCH STORE examines touch as a part of digital culture: the tactility of digitally transmitted jewellery images, given the excessive focus on the phone and the screen.

The audience can see the jewellery as their representation — in the form of a video ad where I attempt to answer the following questions: can the digital image of the jewellery have tactile features, and how does the use of digital media change the relationship between jewellery and tactility?

The exhibition is laid as a shop: each jewellery piece has a label with a story, advertising instructions on how to use the necklace or a ring. Thus, the objects at the exhibition are meant to solve the potential problems of the digital age. For example, they can help to get rid of excessive procrastination on the Internet or clean yourself from digital rubbish seen during the day.

Keiu Krikmann, writer and curator, writes about the show:

‘Darja has chosen to present her work as if displayed in a shop — a choice inspired by the exhibition space that is actually located in a shop but also by her own enjoyment of online shopping, or rather, online window-shopping and the changed understanding of tactility that this experience has provided her with. In the combination of the space being a white-walled gallery and a fake shop, a certain kind of atmosphere is invoked — one that hints at the particular kind of sexiness of commercial product presentation and commodities as fetishised objects.’

For this exhibition, I became inspired by e-shops ads. Reviewing products — even without buying them — offers me particular pleasure. As I read a book by the media theorist Laura U. Marks, I went deeper into the meaning of the term ‘haptic visuality’, where a viewer treats the images with a certain plasticity — when a sense of touch, taste or smell is experienced by a viewer when viewing a screen. Thus, it became an intriguing task for me to study the tactile properties of jewellery images.

A-Gallery’s Vault Room, Tallinn
31.05.—01.07.2019

VFX: Ando Naulainen
Sound Design: Andres Nõlvak
Graphic Design: Johanna Ruukholm

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

RELATED TEXTS, INTERVIEWS & MEDIA COVERAGE
ESTONIAN COVERAGE:
<eaa.ee> <femme.ee>
ENGLISH COVERAGE:
<noba.ac> <agalerii.ee> <cca.ee> <augmentedrealitytour.nl> <krikmann’s review>