"Silicon Valley - Nunciative Modality and a Viral Redux: Recent Works by Joseph Nechvatal"
2001-10-23 until 2001-12-08
Galerie Karin Sachs
Munich, , DE Germany

Galerie Karin Sachs is pleased to announce silicOn valley : nunciative mOdality and a viral redux - a solo exhibition of recent works by new media pioneer, Joseph Nechvatal. This exhibit will be comprised of one large-scale robotic-assisted painting, digital maquette prints, and a real-time operative artificial-life application based on the viral model.

Joseph Nechvatal's computer-robotic assisted paintings allow the tradition of canvas painting to collide with our present digital and technology-based culture. In this sense they create an interface between the virtual and actual - what Nechvatal calls the viractual. His current viractual work stems from a computer virus program developed by the artist in 1991 as a Louis Pasteur artist-in-residence in Arbois, France. Working with electronic visual information and computer-robotics since 1986, Nechvatal's featured paintings translate intimate body images into basic pictorial units which the computer virus mutates and transforms. Nechvatal's innovative work fuses drawing, digital-photography, written language, and externalized computer code. The results of this extensive process are large-scale acrylic paintings which engage the viewer in what Johana Drucker has described as a form of critical pleasure.

For the operative artificial-life application, Nechvatal and his programmer Stephane Sikora have brought Nechvatal’s early computer virus project into the realm of artificial life (A-Life) (i.e. into a synthetic system that exhibits behaviors characteristic of natural living systems). Using a C++ framework, elements of artificial life have been introduced in that viruses are modeled to be autonomous agents living in/off the image. The projected work simulates a population of active viruses functioning as an analogy of a viral biological system.  (For greater detail, see Nechvatal’s website at http://www.nechvatal.net)

Joseph Nechvatal has exhibited widely in Europe and the United States, both in private and public venues, such as Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany; the Wexner Art Center, Columbus; Universal Concepts Unlimited, New York; Julia Friedman, Chicago; and Berndt Galerie, Cologne. His artwork is in many prestigious permanent collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum, LA; the Moderna Musset, Stockholm; and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, among others.

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