Joseph Nechvatal
Press Release
Joseph Nechvatal Retinal Art Revisited: Story of the Eye September 4th – 29th, 2010
A pioneer in the development of digital art, Joseph Nechvatal will present, in a second solo show at Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard, a series of new paintings, most of which are accompanied by a digital video.
The Retinal Art Revisited: Story of the Eye series will take place from September 4th till September 29th, 2010. The exhibition will consist of 20 paintings asissted by robot (10 of which are accompanied by digital animation ). The digital animation shows the paintngs are progressively invaded by one or several computer viruses and will modify their colors and transform them in monochrome.
Story of the Eye refers to a book of Georges Bataille whoes subjects are orifices of the human body. another series of the pantings without digital screen shows works on human shadows.
From the title of this exhibition, Joseph Nechvatal opposes to the concept of Marcel Duchamp who preconized that the intellectual art cannot be esthetically pleasant.
Nechvatal has worked with electronic images and computer technology since 1986. His computer-assisted paintings turn images of the human body into pictorial units that are then transformed by IT viruses. This contamination of the tradition of painting on canvas by new digital technology thus creates an interface between the virtual and the real, which Joseph Nechvatal calls viractual.
It was back in 1991, while working at the Louis Pasteur workshop in Arbois and at the Royal Saltworks of Arc and Senans that Nechvatal and Jean-Philippe Massonie developed a program of IT viruses. In 2001 Joseph Nechvatal and Stéphane Sikora combined the initial IT virus project with the principles of artificial life, in other words creating systems of synthesis that reproduce the behavioural characteristics of living systems. In his previous series of paintings, the fermentation of artificial life was introduced in an image. This population of active viruses then grew, reproduced and propagated within the space of the picture, and the artist then froze a specific moment that he later turned into a painting. Were the artist to not interfere, the process of propagation would continue until the complete destruction of the original picture.
Joseph Nechvatal has recently published a new book titled " Towards an Immersive Intelligence : Essay on the Work of Art in the Age of Computer Technology and Virtual Reality 1993-2006" by Edgewise Publication.