Process / Form solo show at bitforms, nyc
I have a solo show of new work at the bitforms gallery, nyc from 6 March to 12 April 2008. The show opens on Thursday, 6 March 2008, 6-8 pm.
The press release reads:
bitforms gallery is pleased to announce a third solo exhibition with artist C.E.B. Reas, opening March 6. Featuring work from his Process series, the show includes software installations, unique prints, and relief sculpture. Shown in the United States for the first time, these pieces are based in new visual systems, Process 14 and Process 18. Also opening March 6 and marking the New York debut of Reas’ TI installation, a concurrent exhibition titled Impermanent Markings runs at Pratt Manhattan Gallery. Friday March 7, at 6:00 PM, there will be free public lecture with the artist in the campus gallery at 144 West 14th Street.
Work by C.E.B. Reas can be understood in terms of traditional image-making techniques, however the focus lies within finely crafted programs that define processes. Each process, or discreet set of qualitative situations, holds the capacity for expression in user-defined media and scales. After defining each artwork first as a rigorous, logical statement, Reas tests the flexibility of that rational system by playing with the viewpoint and display of visual information. The dynamic physical aesthetics of these creations can be described in geometric, concrete, and/or abstract terms.
Reas’ relationship to writing computer code is akin to Sol LeWitt’s authorship of instructions for wall drawings, but generative software procedures in Reas’ art replace the human hand. Specifically from the perspective of programming, artists Vera Molnar and Manfred Mohr have inspired Reas’ approach toward building visual compositions. Also influenced by earlier artists and thinkers working within systemic conceptual frameworks such as Euclid, Lissitzky, and Haacke, Reas focuses on relationships between dynamic elements.
Perpetually elusive moments characterize Reas’ software installations. Process 14 uses the circle as a primary form and Process 18 uses line. Both kinetic systems are displayed in the gallery as projections on rectangular surfaces, and the picture plane of each is spilt in half vertically. At right, a two-dimensional black and white linear structure reveals the behaviors applied to geometric elements. On the left half, the same geometry creates warm three-dimensional textures.
P18 (Object 1) and P18 (Object 2) are topographical reliefs in resin created using a subtractive milling technique. Articulating a spatial representation of Process 18, these works are algorithmically calculated and translate value into a three-dimensional coordinate. Likewise, prints in the exhibition frame a discreet two-dimensional moment from a system.
The images from Process 18 are depicted in grey scale, however the pictures from Process 14 integrate color. Because hue is a complex value to define and holds subjective emotional content, Reas has chosen to hand-select the mixing palette used for these images. Lush pinks and magentas of Reas’ prints based on Process 14 prints feel so highly charged that a visual kinship appears to exist with Modern abstract painting. Reas’ drawing structures allow time-based execution of each instructed iteration to be performed on open systems, instead of physically manipulated traditional plastic forms. Comparatively using software as a vehicle, philosophic territory that has been historically dominated by oil and water-based media can now be described inside an even wider aesthetic context.
Projected from floor to ceiling, Reas Network software depicts the passage of information through organic and technical environments. Suggesting the fundamental properties of any constellation — be they activities in a star formation or that in peer to peer file sharing — nodes and the channels of connection are represented with the minimalist visual language of lines and circles.