My art practice has developed since 2005 in the digital realm,
seduced by the interplay of art and technology. This led to a series
of New Media installations and events around the world. For the
first decade I was buried in a first degree reading of the world I
operated in. Mentally I needed a critical turn.
This led to my first solo show in 2017 at Mana Contemporary (“First
Light”), in which I brought forth what I see as the core symbolic
foundations of any digital practice: light, color and electricity. I
presented them as primal entities, forgotten myths lurking in the
background of every screen based project.
Since then, the digital realm has grown exponentially, enveloping
almost every aspect of our life. The digital no longer needs to feed
off of the physical (or the “analogue”) to create its internal codes
and narratives, it has plenty to feed from within.
What we are seeing more and more are digital codes creating new,
derivative digital codes, referencing themselves like Memes of
Memes. Digital environments, synthetic humans and online lives
are spawning as attention grabbing narratives that create infinite
copies of each other in narcissistic infinity rooms of the over-networked
culture.
What happens when the loop closes on itself and the chain of
content is rich enough to feed off of it’s own image ad infinitum? It
becomes time for us to take a step back and laugh at the absurdity
of it all, while we sell our attention as digital tokens to buy more
access to the intangible sublime of the glowing screen.
The show was comprised of four installations and a film
1| “02:02”
A description of the way the year 2020 unfolded through extreme mediation of video calls during which various aspects of work and practice were either discussed or accomplished in the background.
A group of cables with male and female plugs on either side are hanging about 15 ft down from the ceiling. They are held together by custom made neon “cable ties”, and plugged at one end is a cel phone that plays a video of the installation being created
Two depolarized LED screens in a custom frame appear to be only showing white light. But in a pool of water in front of the screens, one can see an image in the reflection. The image is of a contemporary Narcissus, looking at himself in the water.
100 power strips are arranged in a grid and are all connected to each other. The first strip is connected to a power source. At the end of the chain, a small projector projects the image of a power plug on the adjacent wall.
A large target is suspended on a wall of the gallery, and a single red laser beam hits the bullseye.