assume vivid astro focus Tate Liverpool 2005
assume vivid astro focus is both the pseudonym of a New York based Brazilian artist and the title given to the artist's wide-ranging aesthetic project. This new work, commissioned for Tate Liverpool to complement the exhibition Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era, is an all-encompassing environment combining exuberant wallpaper designed by the artist and several video projections.
The centrepiece is a video montage, an ongoing project of potentially unlimited duration since new footage is added to it for each venue. This piece encapsulates the inclusive nature of avaf's work and the ideology behind it, which seeks to involve rather than exclude whilst undermining the idea of individual authorship. The video, titled Butch Queen Realness with a Twist in Pastel Colours Video Show, brings together footage drawn from a variety of sources including music videos and television shows, film of club nights, other artists' videos, dance performances, abstract designs and animations. Often the material is obscure and part of avaf's working process is the quest to track it down, a practice exposed in his 'To Do' lists which are released with each new installation.
In avaf's work the sources are blended together, fused, overlapping, contaminated and contaminating. The generous nature of the work extends to the audience who are likewise invited into and absorbed by the work, thus implicating them in avaf's wider project.
