Artie Vierkant
29 Oct - 17 Dec 2011
ARTIE VIERKANT
29 October - 17 December, 2011
Artie Vierkant's Image Objects are works which question the division between material objects and immaterial images. The predominant method of cultural experience today happens through some kind of mediation, be it a screen or another type of interface--in a lecture at MIT in 2007, Michael Mittelman noted that between 90 to 95% of an artist's audience will see their work through documentation of some kind. If this is true, what is the role of the object in an art gallery if not to aid in spreading its own image?
In Vierkant's work, objects installed in gallery space are used as a starting point from which to generate countless derivative works. These images--documentation photos altered using a variety of photo retouching techniques, digital watermarking techniques, and collage methods--equally stem from the original sculptures and come to be associated with the original work itself. In viewing the objects in gallery space, one gets a certain experience of the work, whereas simply to see the images through their altered, abstracted documentation produces a profoundly different experience.
When released into public view, each venue of distribution (print, blog, &c.) in turn receives its own unique version of the documentation images, even if the variation is as simple as an adjustment to the image's watermarks. In this way, by adopting a methodology of versioning and watermarking, the images are freed to disperse in a variety of forms, none more authentic than another. The objects become expanded, caught between all of the versions and distribution channels they come to inhabit, each in association with each other but never the same image.
29 October - 17 December, 2011
Artie Vierkant's Image Objects are works which question the division between material objects and immaterial images. The predominant method of cultural experience today happens through some kind of mediation, be it a screen or another type of interface--in a lecture at MIT in 2007, Michael Mittelman noted that between 90 to 95% of an artist's audience will see their work through documentation of some kind. If this is true, what is the role of the object in an art gallery if not to aid in spreading its own image?
In Vierkant's work, objects installed in gallery space are used as a starting point from which to generate countless derivative works. These images--documentation photos altered using a variety of photo retouching techniques, digital watermarking techniques, and collage methods--equally stem from the original sculptures and come to be associated with the original work itself. In viewing the objects in gallery space, one gets a certain experience of the work, whereas simply to see the images through their altered, abstracted documentation produces a profoundly different experience.
When released into public view, each venue of distribution (print, blog, &c.) in turn receives its own unique version of the documentation images, even if the variation is as simple as an adjustment to the image's watermarks. In this way, by adopting a methodology of versioning and watermarking, the images are freed to disperse in a variety of forms, none more authentic than another. The objects become expanded, caught between all of the versions and distribution channels they come to inhabit, each in association with each other but never the same image.