ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY is pleased to present "La Potion (EH)" (2023), a video animation by French artist Sara Sadik (b. 1994). In addition to showcasing the single-channel video, the gallery is offering limited-edition A4 prints of film stills. This presentation is part of ‘Illuminated: Moving Image Perspectives’, the gallery new digital programme, which will take place over the course of a year, and offer unique insights into new media artists using film, video animation, as well as their latest technological explorations, including blockchain and advanced technologies such as AI. The programme aims to showcase and contextualise diverse digital art practices, while introducing international artists and their distinctive approaches to the gallery’s audience.
‘La Potion (EH)‘ (2023), Sara Sadik’s elegiac work of video art commences with a narrator who introduces a new video game and like us, is looking at the ‘gameplay’ for the first time. However, this game features an avatar of himself. Stressed and anxious the avatar sets out on a walk looking for light and healing: “We will seek happiness since it does not come to us.” Like a magic drink, ‘La Potion’ takes the narrator/avatar on a journey to find a way to feel better. Imagining constellations in the sky, walking through a beautiful garden, jumping towards the sea and swimming beneath the waves he feels soothed and calmed.
Sadik’s work seeks to make visible the lives of the Maghrebi youth of France and especially the second-generation emigres from former French colonies of North Africa, who make up 28% of the population of France. Often inspired by real people she knows in her hometown of Marseille the artist explores masculine identity through computer-generated fantasy scenarios. By placing her characters in an imaginary world, she takes them out of the physical reality of contemporary urban life with all its barriers and politics. As Sadik says, “the story exists elsewhere” and a new reality is created for them. Elevated from their overlooked lives, in her stories they become heroes. “Do you remember how we started the game?” asks the avatar - from a liminal psychological space of darkness full of anxiety and fear, at the conclusion the gamer and his avatar seemed fused in a moment of peace.
Artists’ film and video art since the 1960s has revolutionised the art world. Embraced as a new open-ended means of expression, moving image and animation allow artists to fully exploit the immersive qualities of time-based media. With Sadik the medium continues to evolve into new territory.
Over the next 12 months, ‘Illuminated: Moving Image Perspectives’ will introduce a new artist online each week. The first four featured artists will be Jonas Lund, Sara Sadik, Oliver Laric, and Lauren Lee McCarthy. Each artist will be highlighted on the gallery’s social media every Sunday, beginning on the 17th of November 2024, with weekly updates.
The online streams will be augmented by physical presentations of digital artworks in a private home setting at the gallery founder’s loft in Shoreditch. These installations will be accompanied by regular, invitation-only dinners and carefully curated exclusive viewings for art professionals, fostering deeper connections between artists, collectors, journalists, and museum curators.
As part of this initiative, prints of video stills by the artists will be made available for purchase on the gallery’s website. Furthermore, the gallery is pleased to announce a monthly giveaway, offering subscribers the opportunity to win a selected artist print. Each giveaway will be introduced in the monthly Full Moon newsletter, with the winner announced in the subsequent edition, scheduled for 15 December 2024.
CONTACT US
For all sales enquiries, please contact Annka Kultys at +44 74 555 61 887 (WhatsApp) or at [email protected] (email)
