Digital artist Joseph Nechvatal has show in Berlin

Associated media

Joseph Nechvatal –  ‘Immersion into Noise’ at Art Laboratory Berlin

Artist Talk & Noise Music Concert: 25 April, 2p.m.

25 April – 21 June 2015

Opening hours: Fri–Sun, 2–6p.m. and by appointment 

Curators: Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz

Joseph Nechvatal (born in 1951 in Chicago) is a post-conceptual artist working in digital art. He is a pioneer of 'new media art', but at the same time makes use of 'old media' (such as painting and drawing). His paintings are created through a use of custom artificial-life software and computer robotics.

The exhibition, subtitled ‘Immersion into Noise’, is Nechvatal’s first solo show in Berlin and presents recent works to a Berlin audience alongside his book Immersion into Noise (2011). In that text, Nechvatal provides visual analogies to audio noise within the powerful effects of the act of immersion. 

In the ‘bOdy pandemOnium’ exhibition, and in Nechvatal's work in general, the term ‘viractualism’, meaning the interface between the biological and the technological, plays an essential role. He says: 

The basis of the viractual conception is that virtual producing computer technology has become a noteworthy means for making and understanding contemporary art. This brings art to a place where one finds the merging of the computed (the virtual) with the uncomputed corporeal (the actual).

Parallel to his theoretical research, Nechvatal has created a series of paintings and projections that show  a C++ custom virus program (created with the programmer Stephane Sikora) invading, destroying and transforming his painterly art images, which are based on intimate parts of the human body. In the exhibition at Art Laboratory Berlin, two large computer-robotic assisted paintings will be on display: frOnt windOw retinal autOmata (2012) and rear windOw curiOsites (2012). 

Also on view will be one of the artist’s viral computer software de-generative works, Viral Venture (2011). It is accompanied by a musical score for 200 electric guitars by the composer Rhys Chatham. 

An Artist Talk with Noise Music Concert of his piece 3 pOstmOrtems will take place during the opening weekend, on Saturday, 25 April, 2pm.

Art Laboratory Berlin  
Prinzenallee 34 

13359 Berlin

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