#digital art – Art Spiel

February 19, 2025March 3, 2025, by Riad Miah

Jenny Hankwitz and Amanda Church at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects

Installation of “Intersection” at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects. Image courtesy of the gallery.

The current exhibition by Jenny Hankwitz and Amanda Church at Steven Harvey, running from February 8 to March 8, explores a subject central to painting since its inception. Independently, their work engages with abstraction and figuration, using color, surface, and shape as primary vehicles. When viewed in person, the exhibition demonstrates how each artist approaches their medium to address their own interest between abstraction and the figure. However, when this exhibition is viewed together in the digital realm, another issue emerges—one that was pivotal in art criticism during the 1980s and 1990s that deals with an issue that pre-occupied Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco: the topic of simulation and simulacra or simulacra and hyperreality.

February 17, 2025February 17, 2025, by Etty Yaniv

Pat Lay at New Jersey City University

photo story

A yellow and orange art piece on a white wall

AI-generated content may be incorrect. — Installation view of Pat Lay’s exhibition at the Lemmerman Gallery, NJCU

At first sight, Pat Lay’s vertical scrolls sit comfortably within the soaring Gothic-style Lemmerman Gallery at New Jersey City University. Their mosaic or tapestry-like forms, in glowing red, blue, and gold, echo the tall grided window panes and the elaborate ceiling. Yet once it becomes clear that these scrolls are entirely digital, the contrast generates a sense of fertile dualities.

November 21, 2024December 7, 2024, by MICHELE JASLOW

Art Spiel Picks : Art and Technology NYC Exhibitions November 2024

HIGHLIGHTS

CHANNEL by Scope Collective at Biobat Art Space. Photo courtesy of gallery.

The three exhibitions Digital Being: Radio Row, Water Stories, and GUI/GOOEY explore memory, technology, and sustainability across time. In Digital Being: Radio Row, Taezoo Park breathes new life into obsolete machines, reimagining New York’s Radio Row as a digital hub of the past and future. Water Stories at BioBAT Art Space celebrates water’s ecological and cultural roles through multisensory art, urging conservation for future generations. GUI/GOOEY at Plexus Projects blurs boundaries between digital and organic realms, examining how interfaces reshape our perception of the body and nature through digital media.

October 13, 2024October 13, 2024, by Jac Lahav

The Art of Being Watched: Julia Weist and Surveillance Culture

All persons to whom license certificates have been issued shall not lend or allow any other person to have, hold or display such certificate; and any person so parting with a license certificate or displaying the same without authority shall be guilty of a misdemeanor *Image courtesy the Artist and* *Moskowitz Bayse*

Julia Weist’s new exhibition Private Eye, currently on view at Moskowitz Bayse in LA, blends artistic practice with journalistic research to investigate how big data operates in America. In 2021, companies in the United States spent over $110 billion on big data. Weist’s work taps directly into this massive industry, which buys and sells our personal information without consent.

September 5, 2024October 6, 2024, by MICHELE JASLOW

Art Spiel Picks: Downtown Los Angeles in September 2024

HIGHLIghts

*Nancy Baker Cahill, Substrate Part #1: Universum*, video still, project artists Shereen Moustafa, Mark Sosa, Casper Torres, and Miguel Zavala-Lopez, Central Library Video Wall, Los Angeles Central Library, Los Angeles. On view through December 2024. Video still selected by the author.

Three Downtown Lost Angeles exhibitions use data, disaster, and a shared history to explore community connections. They tap into the past, present, and imagined future to speak about class, labor, and inequity through the use of storage systems, pride of place, and what happens when things fall apart. At Gallery Luisotti’s El Cuerpo: The (Performing) Body and the Photographic Stage Chicano/a artists use themselves as subject to connect through a shared history, at the Los Angeles Central Library Nancy Baker Cahill: Substrate Part #1: Universum uses civic institutions, cultural resources, and data storage systems to forge a connection of community driven by data and at The Museum of Contemporary Art MOCA Grand exhibition Josh Kline: Climate Change community members connect to survive the aftermath of the climate crisis.

April 15, 2024April 9, 2024, by Art Spiel

Simona Prives: towards the noise of dark waters at PRACTICE

Photo Story

Simona Prives’s latest installation at Philadelphia’s PRACTICE Gallery, towards the noise of dark waters, combines projection and collage to explore themes of renewal and decay. This site-specific installation by the Brooklyn-based multi-disciplinary artist features life-sized projections of collages built upon densely packed drawings, ink paintings, and various printmaking techniques. These collages suggest maps, geological patterns, and industrial imagery, creating abstract yet recognizable worlds.

February 9, 2024January 28, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Valérie Hallier – Doodling with Petals

In Dialogue

Valérie Hallier working on the series *Déflorée History* in her studio during a residency with ESKFF at Mana Contemporary, NJ., 2023

Flower petals gradually became a significant element in Valérie Hallier’s artwork. Fascinated by the profound symbolism of flowers, Hallier initially struggled to incorporate them effectively into her artistic practice. Her initial approach involved photographing flowers in unique ways and settings. She also experimented with their dried components, adhering them to various surfaces. Eventually, she began to focus on pressing individual petals. Hallier discovered that working with petals was ideal for conveying complex themes such as femininity, resilience, sexuality, vibrancy, and decay. Born in Paris, France, and raised in Normandy, Hallier had a shy nature as a child. She was consumed with the ambition to draw everything in existence, a desire for comprehensiveness that continues to influence her work. Art, for her, has always been an essential means of engaging with both her internal and external worlds. Reflecting on her early art education, Hallier fondly remembers her excitement upon meeting others who shared her artistic ‘language.’

January 28, 2024February 6, 2024, by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

On Henry Street, Tianyi Sun Works with Simulacra and Cuteness

*Tianyi Sun and Fiel Guhit. “Bakery Story*,” installed as part of FROM_LISTENERS, 2023. 30 x 18 x 32 inches, Laser cut and engraved acrylic, aluminium, LCD screen, webcam.

“I love it. I am all for kitschy stuff,” Tianyi Sun says, laughing, as she notices the iridescent glitter liquid phone case. In her practice, Sun engages with the cute and zany using these categories as an entry point to embody how we approach technology in our everyday lives—her work takes the form of installations and responsive environments activated by a reading or performance. With much of her work being modular, the audience moving through the space is as important as the work itself—“bridging the digital and the analog,” she explains. “I want to expose the aesthetics, the beauty, the politics without lessening the visceral response.” A central question of her work is: What happens with the human experience as we navigate technology?

October 24, 2023October 23, 2023, by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

The Immigrant Artist Biennial – In Dialogue

Moving Image: Nicholas Oh & Ayoung Justine Yu, Alexander Si, and Masha Vlasova

A sun shining through the trees

Description automatically generated — Masha Vlasova. *Waterlands*, 2022. Experimental film,15 min. 4K. Courtesy of the artist and The Immigrant Artist Biennial.

Surrealists invigorated the film genre in the 1920s and 30s, especially the Spaniards Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí—who at the time were living in Paris—with their non-linear narrative film Un Chien Andalou (1929). Surrealist elements reign in The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2023: Contact Zone’s exhibition Excavated Selves, Magic Bodies at Alchemy Gallery—where surreal elements allow bodies to thrive, often in hostility. A garment used in the video work Mourning Ritual created by artist duo AYDO (Nicholas Oh & Ayoung Justine Yu) on the border between North and South Korea is included in the show. It uses spirituality, ancestry, and surreal landscape to engage with the separation of families and loss of connection. In Parasites and Vessels at Accent Sisters, Alexander Si employs video matter of fact to document his process of crafting a Birkin bag. Masha Vlasova’s poetic work Waterlands investigates surface and texture in the landscape in Enmeshed, Dreams of Water at NARS Foundation.

August 1, 2023July 26, 2023, by Art Spiel

Inner Landscapes | Paesaggi Interiori at MuSA Museum

featured exhibition

A room with large screens

Description automatically generated

Inner Landscapes | Paesaggi Interiori, a video installation by Angelica Bergamini and curated by Alessandro Romanini and Maurizio Marco Tozzi, marks the beginning of a new season of multimedia work at the MuSA museum in Pietrasanta, a city in northern Tuscany, Italy. This installation artfully weaves together a rich tapestry of visual and auditory elements.