Modern Art Oxford

Lynn Hershman Leeson

29 May - 09 Aug 2015

Lynn Hershman Leeson
Detail graphic of Agent Ruby 1996-2002
Artificial Intelligent interactive web bot, courtesy the artist.
LYNN HERSHMAN LEESON
Origins of the Species (Part 2)
29 May — 9 August 2015

Modern Art Oxford presents a major solo exhibition of American artist Lynn Hershman Leeson.

An early practitioner of installation and interactive art, Hershman Leeson has received international acclaim for work that explores privacy in an era of surveillance, the relationship between real and virtual worlds and the mutability of identity in an increasingly mediated society.

This landmark exhibition conveys the diversity of Hershman Leeson’s pioneering multi-disciplinary practice. In a site-specific work, with a new element produced for Oxford, The Infinity Engine captures the senses by inviting visitors in to a dynamic installation that mimics the conditions of a genetics research lab. This installation takes a critical look at the ramifications of experimentation with genetics, presenting the ethical dilemmas facing scientists, and society, today.

Hershman Leeson’s extensive career focuses on the changing relationship between the body and technology which led to her pioneering work with artificial intelligence, implants and printed limbs. As technology has advanced, so has Hershman Leeson’s work, focussing more recently on the medical and societal context surrounding genetic science.

Lynn Hershman Leeson, b. 1941, Cleveland, Ohio, lives and works between San Francisco, California and New York.

Over the last three decades, artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson has been internationally acclaimed for her pioneering use of new technologies and her investigations of issues that are now recognized as key to the working of our society: identity in a time of consumerism, privacy in a era of surveillance, interfacing of humans and machines, and the relationship between real and virtual worlds. A major survey of Hershman Leeson’s work was presented in 2012 at Kunsthalle Bremen and her work was featured in A Bigger Splash: Painting After Performance, Tate Modern, London in 2012.

Hershman Leeson released the ground-breaking documentary !Women Art Revolution in 2011. It has been screened at major museums internationally and named by the Museum of Modern Art as one of the three best documentaries of the year. She wrote, directed, produced and edited the feature films Strange Culture, Conceiving Ada, and Teknolust, all featuring Tilda Swinton and the films were showcased at the Sundance Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival before being distributed internationally.

She has been honoured with grants from Creative Capital, The National Endowment for the Arts, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Siemens International Media Arts Award, Lifetime Achievement from Siggraph, Prix Ars Electronica, and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Prize for Writing and Directing. The Digital Art Museum in Berlin recognized her work with the d.velop digital art award (d.daa), for Lifetime Achievement in the field of New Media. Her work is featured in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, William Lehmbruck Museum, Tate Modern, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The National Gallery of Canada, Walker Art Center, The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester and the University Art Museum, Berkeley, in addition to the celebrated private collections.

Hershman Leeson is Emeritus Professor, University of California, Davis; and has been A.D. White Professor, Cornell University.
 

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