ABOUT OSAGE GALLERYOsage Gallery was established in Hong Kong in 2004 and grew quickly to become one ofAsia’s largest commercial gallery groups. Osage has become well known in the art world
for its uncompromising support for the most challenging and critically thought-provoking
contemporary art.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Special edition pamphlet 10052016.indd 1

Maurice Benayoun AKA MoBen 莫奔, is aFrench artist based in Hong Kong. A pioneer ofOpen Media Art, MoBen’s highly diverse work
explores all the artistic fields of expression,using various media from photography andvideo to urban large-scale installations.

Osage Gallery dances the edge of the latest innovations in art, culture and technology and is

His work has been exhibited in major
contemporary art museums (Centre Pompidou,MAC Lyon, MAC Montreal, Kiasma (Helsinki),
Eyebeam, Moving Image (NYC), ICC (Tokyo),
Machida Museum, Museum of Art Seoul, Chi
K11 Art Space (Shanghai) and the Shanghai
Science and Technology Museum, etc).
Commissioned by biennials and part of many
public and private collections, MoBen’s work
has won numerous international awards
including the coveted Golden Nica, Ars
Electronica Prize.

Osage Gallery has gained wide international recognition for the global, multidisciplinary andBenayoun is a contributor to the vibrancy
and activation of Hong Kong’s new media
arts scene. He is the initiator and curator ofthe Open Sky Campus project, which madepossible the use of the ICC as an urban screen
and platform for emerging media artists. He
has also been involved in a number of media art
projects in Hong Kong such as Fleeting Light:
the Fourth Large Scale Interactive Media Arts
Festival as co-curator, ISEA 2016 Hong Kong,as a member of the organizing committee andIFVA, as a jury panel member. Benayoun is also
currently a Professor at the School of CreativeMedia, City University of Hong Kong.

ENQUIRIES
Vesper Guo
vesperguo@osagegallery.com+852 2172 1635

a platform for forward thinking and new ideas. Osage Gallery is curatorially driven and aims to
be a catalyst for creative expression and the active engagement of audiences. Its programmesof exhibitions, publications and research examine the questions that shape and inspire us asindividuals, and our cultures and communities.

diverse approaches of its programmes. Osage was the first Hong Kong gallery to feature at

JUST DIG/IT!

MAURICEBENAYOUN

the Statements section of Art Basel, Basel in 2011, the Spotlight section at Frieze Masters
in London in 2012, Arte Fiera in Bologna, Italy, 2014, Art Cologne in Germany, 2014, and is
one of the first Hong Kong galleries to participate in Moving Image New York, 2014. Osage
has also participated in Art Hong Kong from 2008 – 2012 and at Art Basel, Hong Kong from2013-2016.
www.osagegallery.com

osage hong kong
4/F, 20 Hing Yip Street,Kwun Tong, Hong Kong

Phone: +852 23898332
Email: info@osagegallery.com
Website: www.osagegallery.com
Twitter: @osagegallery
Facebook: osagegallery

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A COLLECTION OF FIRSTSCOLORS TUNNEL AND BORDERS TUNNEL (2016)

Osage Gallery invites you to navigate human-to-human connections
in a virtual world by Maurice Benayoun.

The Colors and Borders Tunnels are newly developed in 2016.

The exhibition JUST DIG/IT! presents for the first time as large-scaleinstallations, Inside the Tunnel under the Atlantic (1995, video,22”30’) and Inside the Paris-New Delhi Tunnel (1997, video, 13”00’).
Presented will also be Tunnel Shots, produced at the Pompidou
Center during the exhibition of Tunnel under the Atlantic (1995),
never before shown to the public.

Colors Tunnel. Opening up the data set that the virtual environment draws from from museum
image collections to the Internet, this new tunnel probes issues surrounding colors. Stemmingfrom the notion of “stereotypes” in the original sense of the word, meaning printing plates used
to create the same image, the artist questions how images of colors so often used to represent
superficial layers of perception, represent and contribute to our understandings of specific shifts
in culture, particularly when repeated and mass distributed. The images are of Hong Kong, taggedwith different colors, and are received at random from the web.

The work, Tunnel Under the Atlantic is recognized as the:• First intercontinental virtual reality installation;• First virtual reality installation with real time dynamic
architecture, and;• First virtual video director;• First virtual photo reporter;• First virtual librarian using artificial intelligence;• First virtual composer• First real time video meeting inside a virtual reality environment;• First user centric content in a virtual reality environment.

The Borders Tunnel, similarly created in 2016, draws from the internet images related togeopolitical boundaries, questioning their direct impact on peoples’ difficulties to move, meet andlive together.

TUNNEL UNDER THE ATLANTIC (1995)
In 1995, when the Web was just emerging, Maurice Benayoun created a virtual underground worldusing images from the collection of French National Museums and the Museum of Civilizations,
Quebec. The work took place simultaneously at the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Museumof Contemporary Art, Montreal – linking the two cities in the world’s first virtual Tunnel Under theAtlantic. Images from the museum collections formed “cultural obstacles” that visitors had to dig
through in Paris and Montreal respectively, led by nothing other than sound and music composedby Martin Matalon in order to meet each other. The project was exhibited as part of ISEA 1995
(Montreal).
Unlike the virtual reality technologies prior to this,which worked predominantly with predetermined,
fixed virtual environments, the structure of the virtualtunnels are a formless mass of data and uninformed
matter until the user makes certain decisions.
The users are thus the pioneering navigators ofa constellation of information points that shiftbased on their input. Benayoun and his team had
programmed a society of intelligent virtual agents,
each of whom facilitates the user to discover thisvirtual environment, while also producing artworks
within this world. The team consists of:

In his 1995 review of the Tunnel Under
the Atlantic published in Le Monde, JeanPaul Fargier describes the experience ofdigging as, “indeed entering images. Not
only in what they represent, but in theirvery fabric. Walking, discovering secretchannels, curling up in their folds, being
lost in their frames, watching them throb,
and bouncing from one to the other likeplaying hopscotch in an infinite curve.”

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Music for these new tunnels are composed by Jean-Baptiste Barrière.
In 2016, participants will dig and explore these tunnels using their whole bodies. Motion detection
technologies will allow the virtual agents to learn from participants’ body language. The virtual
spaces of the tunnels and physical spaces of the gallery are thus compressed. In the real world,
digging tunnels are a way to reduce distance and go through cultural, political and geographic
obstacles. With the virtual tunnels, it becomes a new space for dialogue.
Trailer to Inside theTunnel Under the Atlantic:

ISEA2016 BRUNCHRECEPTION
22nd May
1.30 pm - 5.00 pm

VENUE
Osage Hong Kong
4/F, 20 Hing Yip Street,
Kwun Tong, Kowloon,
Hong Kong• The Librarian: a content manager – draws up theimages from the museum collections, anticipating
visitors’ desires.
• The Architect: facilitates the digging into theseimages to form the tunnels• The Video Director: shoots and edits footage of theentire journey in real time
• The Photo Reporter: captures still shots of thetunnel digging and all the “galleries” created by theparticipants• The Composer: composes music and manages theaudio mixing in real time

Mon – Sat: 10.30 am – 6.30 pm
Sun: 2.30 – 6.30 pm

Each agent evolves, improving their skills andchanging their topics or their resources, learning
alongside the participants.

Open to special appointments
outside of these times.
Closed on public holidays.

EXHIBITION PERIOD
20th April – 25th May 2016

TUNNEL STRUCTURE DRAWINGS: Anneli Giencke | ENGINEERING: Daniel Miller,Wang Xiao | PRODUCTION: Sigma Art Services (Jay Due, Lysander Leung, Psyche Ma),
School of Creative Media (City University of Hong Kong), Moben Fact (France) | IMAGE
SOURCES: Web data mining | PAMPHLET DESIGN: Pixel Cascante for Osage Design
SPECIAL THANKS TO:

OPENING HOURSAnn Mak, Chloe Chu, David Nahon, Tristan Lorac, ISEA2016, Centre Georges Pompidou,
Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, French Ministry of Culture Délégation aux Arts Plastiques (DAP), French National Library, Fond National d’art Contemporain (FNAC), French
National Institute of Audiovisual Archives (INA), IRCAM, Ministère Canadien du Patrimoine- Musée Canadien des Civilisations de Hull, Ministère de la Culture public commission(CNAP), Réunion des Musées Nationaux (RMN), Silicon Graphics France et Europe (SGI),
Studio Cérézales, Virtual Gallery (New Delhi) and ZA Production (Paris).

5/11/2016 9:57:03 AM