Pakui Hardware, solo show Virtual Care at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, U.K. 19 May 2021 – 3 Oct 2021

The new installation at BALTIC, the space was transformed into an environment that resembles a clinical surgery room where human presence – with the exception of the visitor themselves – is replaced by technology. Glass objects affixed to a hanging surgical lamp sculpture will create a sense of warmth and care, in contrast to the alienated coolness of its steel arms that make anthropomorphic reference to surgeon’s hands. Suspended between physical and virtual, bodily and digital, transparent thermoformed or resin ‘bodies’ will be abstracted into sculptural biomorphic shapes that are both present and erased at the same time. Partially inspired by paintings by Lithuanian artist Terese Rozanskaite from the 1970s and 80s, these ‘bodies’ are traces, shells of ‘flesh’, dominated by technology.

Reviews:

Pakui Hardware’s Vision of Post-Pandemic Healthcare by Alice Bucknell, Frieze Magazine, 2021

Pakui Hardware “Virtual Care” BALTIC / Gateshead by Caroline Elbaor, Flash Art Magazine, 2021

Feature: Take the Long View with Pakui Hardware by Martin Herbert, ArtReview, 2021

Interview: Pakui Hardware Reflect On Reimagining the Aesthetics of Care by Ravi Ghosh, Elephant Magazine, 2021

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art · Pakui Hardware: Virtual Care | Audio Description