September 10 – November 7, 2015
OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, September 10th, 6:00-8:00PM
ARTIST AND CURATOR WALK THROUGH: 5:30-6:00PM
ON VIEW: September 10th – November 7th, 2015
Screen Time features works by artists Asha Schechter and Sandra Vaka Olsen and is guest curated by Tina Kukielski. The work in this exhibition challenges the definition of the photographic image. Both Schechter and Vaka Olsen explore the effects of the digital screen on the process and product of contemporary image-making. In Schechter and Vaka Olsen’s work, gestures, icons, and depictions of the screen itself break free from the confines of the rectilinear form, and extend into the material world.
Traditionally, the photograph has presented a window into another reality. Today we are surrounded by screens and digital displays with our visual fields rapidly reconfigured and replaced by the many devices that occupy our world. By creating works that transform the surface of the computer screen into printed material artworks that activate three dimensions, Schechter and Vaka Olsen’s works challenge a photograph’s state of matter.
In conjunction with this exhibition, PPAC will host a screening of The Invisible Photograph on Thursday, October 1st.
Asha Schechter (b. 1979, in Sebastopol, California; lives and works in Los Angeles) For artist Asha Schechter, digitally generated 3-D images represent a new kind of image that has a separate economy from that of the photograph, with its own descriptive language, production and terms. Schechter’s work explores this new economy of images that nonetheless require specialization in their making. Schechter liberates his chosen subjects, allowing images to step outside of the screen and into our surrounding environment. In so doing, he highlights the sometimes arbitrary and sometimes functional qualities of an emerging visual vocabulary.
Sandra Vaka Olsen (b. 1980 in Stavanger, Norway; lives and works in Berlin)
For artist Sandra Vaka Olsen, chemical and technical processes contribute to the work’s creation. Vaka Olsen’s thoroughly distinct approach reverses the process of digital photography. Her digital images are first altered on screen before they take on a material form. She does this through the application of liquids directly onto her LCD screen. Later, once the distorted, pixelated image is printed, Vaka Olsen then applies analogue photographic methods to create yet another layer of gestural expression. The work is a complex blend of analogue and digital effects that express the challenges of finding a place for human touch in an increasingly automated world.
Tina Kukielski was co-curator of the 2013 Carnegie International with Daniel Baumann and Dan Byers, and served as curator of the Hillman Photography Initiative. She recently curated the exhibition Cory Arcangel: Masters (November 3, 2012–January 27, 2013). Kukielski was formerly senior curatorial assistant at the Whitney Museum of American Art where she co-organized the museum’s contemporary project series from 2007–2011. While at the Whitney, she also curated a number of group exhibitions of photography. Her publications include catalogue essays for *William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photography and Video, 1958–2008* (2008), Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2008), and Gordon Matta-Clark: You Are the Measure (2007), among others. She is also a recent contributor to Mousse and The Exhibitionist.
This exhibition is made possible with support from the Royal Norwegian Consulate General and PPAC’s donors and members.
