How
images speak and represent has always been a central contention in visual art, particularly
in a culture obsessively reliant on visual perception. The technically
engendered image and its contemporary namesake the digital image, however, take
on very different connotation than that which is rendered by human craft, painting,
sculpture or otherwise in the myriad manifestation of contemporary art
practice. While painterly image or other mediums employed through various
physical materials are also beholden to ambiguity and poetic elucidation, image
production through technical mechanisms opens a temporal dimension and
energetic velocity that evokes more physiological - emotional intensity than an
art which privileges critical distance for contemplation and signification.
Images originated through dynamic manipulation of data on the fly furthermore
defy the regime of representation, eliciting bifurcation of the referential and
estrangement of intentionality, often alienating and sometimes even
nonsensical, begging for an alternative logic for illumination and
signification.
Known for his ingeniously
crafted kinetic works, often inflicting a twist on pop culture imagery, Jon Kessler¡¯s
explicit portrait and figure, namely the supermodel Gisele B¨¹ndchen and the
artist¡¯s ten-year old nephew, are as manipulative as evasive by way of a mechanically
rendered flurry of speeds and kaleidoscope of juxtapositions and
superimpositions, insinuating infinite regressions and expansion at the same
time, reminiscent of a paradoxical mixology of anxiety, humor, desire and
failure that is characteristic of the contemporary American ethos or the world
at large. The conceptual artist YAN Lei, on the other hand, resorts to Machine
Learning as an added intellectual device in order to question conceptualism¡¯s
very gist, that of the power of signifying, making aware that in the age of
Internet and Artificial Intelligence the production of meaning is as
multifaceted as it is unstable and can sometimes be perilous. In the seemingly contradictory
display of visual strategy,
the voyeur and the exhibitionist and the constant inversion of the protagonists
further complicated by their respective social intricacies, the works by the two
artists nevertheless implicitly partake in the electro-mechanical prowess augmented
irrevocably by digital volatility and algorithmic incidents, challenging the
very notion of image as sign or as signifier.
This exhibition is the
third iteration of Art & Technology @ program under the auspices of
Datumsoria. A neologism, Datumsoria conjugates datum and
sensoria, denoting a new perceptual space immanent to the information age.
Three Rooms: Edge of Now
08.11.2018 - 20.01.2019
Curated by ZHANG Ga
Artists: Verena Friedrich, Kim Hee-cheon, YANG Jian
Chronus
Art Center (CAC) is pleased to present Three
Rooms: The Edge of Now, an international touring exhibition contributes to current
discussions about contemporary media technologies and the new potentials of
artmaking from the perspective of the young generation.
E-mail: info@chronusartcenter
Tel: +21 5271 5789
Website: www.chronusartcenter.org
Address: 2/F, 11 BLDG, No. 50 Moganshan Road, Putuo District, Shanghai