Anne Vieux, Infinite Cube I, 2015, lenticular print, wood & microfiber, 15 x 12.5 x 15 inches

EMULATOR

Anne Vieux
Canyon Castator
Jonathan Chapline

Opening Reception: 6 – 8PM  April 14th, 2016
On View: April 15th – June 5th, 2016

SELECTED PRESS:
VICE -The Creator’s Project
Kill Screen

“…the screen is at once a surface and a frame — a reflective plane onto which an image is cast and a frame that limits its views.”

– Anne Friedberg, “The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft”

Gallery 151 is proud to present the group exhibition “EMULATOR”, a digitally informed exploration in painting. In computing, an Emulator is a hardware or software that enables one system, the host, to behave like another system, the guest. Anne Vieux, Canyon Castator, and Jonathan Chapline employ their own digital vernaculars to derail this methodology by creating an aporia of non-linear thinking in which the roles of host and guest, or physical and digital, constantly interchange. The digital is the reproducible and limitless. Shifts of space, content, and rendering link these artists in complex ways, and their bold color schemes shock and produce physical sensations similar to the aftereffects of looking at a bright, shimmering screen.

Hyper colored inkjet printing, digital processing, and physical manipulation repeat on loop in Anne Vieux’s work. Her paintings and sculptures create a maximal minimalism. The process of scanning reflective papers creates a gradient effect, similar to a Photoshop lens flare, and the boundaries between image and surface create a unique materiality of the image/object. Curved and striated grooves twist the light, and paintings ride waves of effects. The forms mimic a generative organic process, yet– the new-old to the new-new, results in a digital/analog double fakeout.

Castator and Chapline evoke distance and memory of a variety perhaps unknown to the pre-internet generations, but with a sense of color and composition that belie a deep understanding of art history. Unrestrained by the material and linear thinking of antiquated methods, Canyon Castator expands on traditional painting techniques digitally on the iPad. In these “Digital Finger Paintings”, Castator samples, dismantles and reconstructs source image leitmotif, reappropriating it into a visual “Memory Palace”. The paintings are then printed on canvas and coated in an oil varnish. While this process creates the texture, scent and appearance of an oil painting–perhaps earlier work by Christoph Ruckhäberle or Rosson Crow– the subtleties of the “draw” program are charmingly nude to the eye. 

Jonathan Chapline creates a fascinating oblique hierarchy reminiscent of certain Chicago Imagists, like a moody but less terrifying Ed Paschke — also a fan of the techniques of machine-use to create his pictures. Chapline’s compositions, while evoking the dissonance of the fractured digital, seduce with intelligent arrangements of objects and subtleties of color. The boundaries between image and surface create a unique materiality. Undulating organic forms contrast with sharp geometries, and we drift along the reticulated field until hitting the stark edge of the frame and returning.

–Andrea Magenheimer

For all exhibition inquires, please contact Anna Gritsevich: gallery151@wallplay.com