SARA SADIK | La Potion (EH)

ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
sara_sadik_01_lapotion_[2023]_web
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SARA SADIK |
LA POTION (EH)

24 NOVEMBER 2024 — ONGOING

SARA SADIK
La Potion (EH)
2023
Video (colour, sound), MP4 of real time gaming system (Unity)
13 min 05 sec
3024 x 1680px
Edition of 5 + 2AP
(SSad001.23)
Comissionned by BMW Open Work, Frieze London

PRESS RELEASE

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. A

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.

For all sales enquiries, please contact Annka Kultys at +44 74 555 61 887 (WhatsApp) or at annka@annkakultys.com (email)

INTERVIEW

ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY

What software did you use to make the work? Did you choose it for any particular reason? 

This project was commissioned by Frieze London and BMW, I wanted to create a game that will be used both for the video La Potion (EH) as well as playable game trough AirConsole in a BMW car so I had to create the game with Unity for it to work on AirConsole.

How do you approach the balance between the technical aspects of digital creation and the conceptual or narrative elements in your work? 

I’m always looking for new technology or specific cameras to work with. Depending on the project I either start with the technique I want to use and write the story in a way that will work best for it or I start with the story and then search for the best technique to give life to it. For La Potion (EH) I wanted to create a Twitch live-stream format, so the use of a video-game engine came first. Throughout my process the technical aspects and narrative elements always work together simultaneously and they both serve the purpose of each other.  

What are the themes or messages you hope to convey through your work? 

The recurrent theme in my work is masculinity with a focus on emotions, related to both solitude and relationship. I write characters and their initiatory journey focusing on the figure of the lone-wolf. Intimate stories of invisibilized men that I want people to hear and listen to.  

If you could choose one technological invention from the past or future to live without, what would it be and why? 

I would say generative AI, but more specifically when it’s used in the creation process. I think that it’s an amazing tool, but it has to be used  only as a tool that helps artists not create everything for them. I personally use generative IA in my working process but only at the early stages when I need to make storyboards but I don’t use it on the final work. It’s really helpful to use it to have a visualisation of my ideas but I could do without it. 

ARTIST INFORMATION

Sara Sadik was born in 1994 in Bordeaux, she lives and works in Marseille, France.

ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY