Just one more click. Just one more page reload. Then you’ll have found what you’re looking for, then it will be enough. But it never is. This feeling of never being satiated when prowling for entertainment on the internet is the basis for the exhibition pr0n, currently on show at Galerie Pangée. The term pr0n was created by those who are looking for pornographic content on the internet while trying to circumvent spelling filters. For curator Raji Sohal pr0n is not confined to sexually explicit material, though, but to any content which fuels intense and unmet desires. This includes images of celebrities, luxury goods, and games.

For the exhibition at Pangée Sohal collaborates with artists from the online gallery BOCA (Bozeau-Ortega Contemporary Arts), transforming their digital artworks into physical objects. The exhibition pr0n includes works by Jon Rafman, Matt Goerzen, Julian Garcia, Jason Harvey, Tyson Parks, Jeremy Dabrowski, and Vincent Charlebois. Matt Goerzen’s light boxes are assembled from Dell laptop computers which have been sprayed black. Each screen displays the image of an eerily altered celebrity, such as the “Brangelina” portrait which combines the features of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, or the fusion of Clint Eastwood and President Obama on a backdrop a gradiating skin colour.

Tyson Parks’ piece Blogroll is a visual pun, alluding to the quality of much of the imagery found on the internet. Cascading from a toilet roll hung near ceiling, a long strip of paper is covered in random images found on the web. The cacophony of colour is garish, yet – absorbing. More subtle is the sculptural piece Digital Drugs in the Age of Data Objects by Vincent Charlebois. Placed on a slab of mahogany which floats on two sheets of plexiglass is a small plastic sachet with pills bearing computer keyboard symbols such as  @ # *. These “happy pills” were created using 3D printing techniques – virtual medicine for a virtual world.

The exhibition has been extended until March 31st, so you still have a week to meet your unfulfilled desires at pr0n.

Galerie Pangée, space 412
BOCA Gallery
pr0n
February 16 – March 31, 2012
www.galeriepangee.com