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A Feel of Thinking
A Feel of Thinking
2012
Michael Jon Gallery is pleased to announce A FEEL OF THINKING, an exhibition of new work by Siebren Versteeg. The show will run from September 8 through October 20, 2012; an opening reception will be held on Saturday, September 8 from 7:00 until 10:00pm. A FEEL OF THINKING continues Versteeg’s mediations of painterly abstraction through code and chance, spirit and circuitry. In recent years, Versteeg has been authoring an archive of behavioral functions by manipulating computer language to generate images of paintings that exist exclusively in data space. The code writing itself is praxis, manifesting an ever-evolving algorithm to mathmatically render every visual aspect of a painting; from texture of substrate, to thickness of brush, to viscocity of pigment binder. The result however is not autopilot, but a study of how artists might use today’s ancillary technologies while maintaining expressive autonomy. Versteeg’s work lays claim to the uncanny valley, a place where things are neither completely biological nor artificial. This limbo attests to the shifting borders of the human body and its potential. A FEEL OF THINKING will feature three self illuminating pieces within a dim gallery. A wall-sized HD projection, Making Time, Travel Slow exhibits an algorithmically rendered painting that, every 15 minutes, is virtually de-installed and replaced with a new version that was generated off screen just seconds before. A persistent element of this piece however is the clock, a nod to the diegetic temporality of recent Christian Marclay projects as well as the in situ performative startegies of many contemporary painters such as Josh Smith. On an adjacent wall hangs an electroluminescently backlit duratran sheet displaying one of an infinitude of these possible mechanized gestures. On the floor, readymade stencils spelling out “A FEEL OF THINKING” are haphazardly dropped over an exposed electroluminescent void. A casual arrangement that is deeply mediated by historical and technological references.
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