with a little help)
Benjamin Cook
10.06.17 - 10.27.17
featuring:
Michelle Fleck
Dan Lam
So Youn Lee
Ashely Piefer
Sean Phetsarath
Mark Posey
Michael Reeder
Allison Reimus
Jenn Smith
Denise Treizman
Heath West
Image Construction (from my friends, with a little help) exists in between my curatorial and studio practices. Each work in the show was obtained through an art trade made between myself and friends I met through Instagram. The collection, acquired from the spring of 2015 to the summer of 2017, creates a visual catalog of social relationships filtered through, and often structured by, an opaque algorithm. Trades are indexed and mined for information to better understand the structure and logic of the system that guides when and what I see on the app.
The idea of the individual curator is all but dead.The algorithm of Instagram works in conjunction with the uncertainty of human choice. Engagement in the form of likes, follows, comments, and views become input information that yields a new set of potential engagements. This feedback loop creates communities of users that are frequently shown the same images while being afforded the 'freedom' to insert their own choice of what to engage with. At a certain point, personal taste becomes intertwined with the editorial nature of the algorithm. As more and more artists flock to Instagram in order to cash in on the currency of visibility, curators, critics, and collectors follow. Even those who reject the social media app, favoring the traditional method of discovering artists in galleries, find themselves looking at some of the artist's work without realizing that social media has afforded that artist the opportunity to show in the space to begin with. The curatorial decisions made by an individual are coupled with the programmed variables of the algorithm and the other users that input their own small amount of decision making data.
One Foot Planted Firmly on the Ground
Josh AndersonRoxana Azar
Tom Hoying
Future Retrieval
Caroline Turner
Casey James Wilson
09.08.17 - 09.29.17
One Foot Planted Firmly on the Ground, features new work from Josh Anderson, Roxana Azar, Tom Hoying, Future Retrieval (Katie Parker and Guy Michael Davis), Caroline Turner, and Casey James Wilson. Each artist was asked to contribute two works that address the role of nature in the broadest possible sense.
With the ‘death of god’ and the rise of ideology (capitalism, nationalism, etc.) in the early twentieth century, we began to think of ourselves as separate from nature. It became a resource; something that can be commodified and consumed. One Foot Planted Firmly on the Ground aims to question this phenomenon and examines from a multitude of angles the state of our place in nature. Are our natural experiences forever mediated by the new digital condition that we embody? Have our ideas of nature become idealized in the wake of pervasive social media? Is the lived experience still valuable, or do we place too much emphasis on the documentation?
Can we still hold ground in the shifting landscape?
Iron Bubbles
7.22.17 - 8.25.17
incandescence to ore, to Earth
4.28.17 - 6.2.17
incandescence to ore, to Earth is a virtual experiment that attempts to fuse the ancient and the contemporary, the evaluative and the empathetic and the virtual and the physical. The hand tools shown here (LA 91 W 47 9, LA 91 V 46 6, FxJj 63 H and FxJj 18 GL 6125) are digital facsimile of objects crafted by humans approximately 2 million years ago. The human figure shown here is a digital facsimile of the artist’s body crafted approximately 2 months ago. Simulation of the hand gestures required to grasp the objects is informed by the particular material properties of the hand tools (e.g., x=50.36; y=30.03; z=46.02 mm; Raw Material: Basalt) and the structural idiosyncrasies of the virtual body.
The work is intended as a meditation on the range and nature of relationships possible between physical and digital bodies and objects and how these relationships might evolve as technologies that allow for these relationships become increasingly embedded in our everyday lives.
De-Narration
2.24.17 - 3.31.17
De-narration is “the process whereby one’s life stops feeling like a story” or a form of losing one’s individuality in favor of the collective. The artists have responded to this phenomenon through a variety of media including photography, sculpture, and virtual reality.
There is no narrative: ramen noodles scatter barren wastelands, an animated rock haphazardly moves around the gallery, flowers decay in virtual space, and stock photo models dissolve into the ether. As networks proliferate, our constructed systems of self must adapt. Are we able to accept increasingly banal forms of identification? Or will we cling onto the last shred of ourselves, making small, but meaningful attempts to preserve individuality in the wake of globalization and the information age?
Will we ever be able to accept obsolescence?