Joseph Nechvatal

Art rétinal revisité: histoire de l’oeil

Paris

press release

A pioneer in the development in digital art, Joseph Nechvatal will present, in a second solo show in the gallery, a series of new paintings, most of which are accompanied by a digital animation.

Art Rétinal Revisité: Histoire de l’Oeil will take place from September 4^th through September 29^th, 2010 and will invite the spectator to reflect on the importance of visual noise in the process of creation.

The Retinal Art Revisited series consists of 19 digitally assisted paintings (10 of which have accompanying animations). The animations that are joined with paintings show a computer virus eating the same image as that which is on the painting. This approach began with work in the 2004 Digital Sublime show at MOCA in Taipei.

In Retinal Art Revisited, a group of painting-animations portray the retina of the human eye, combined with painting-animations of the human rectum. Another group of paintings address the peculiar phenomenon of shadows.

With the title of the exhibition, Joseph Nechvatal differs with Marcel Duchamp’s preconception that intelligent art cannot also be beautiful to the eye.

Joseph Nechvatal has worked with electronic images and information technology since 1986. His computer-assisted paintings turn images of the human body into pictorial units that are then transformed by computer virus-like software. This activity represents the contamination of the tradition of painting on canvas by new digital technology, subsequently creating an interface between the virtual and the real that Nechvatal calls the viractual.

It was in 1991, while working at the Louis Pasteur Atelier in Arbois and at the Royal Saltworks of Arc et Senans that Nechvatal and Jean-Philippe Massonie developed a program of information technology viruses. In 2001 Nechvatal and Stéphane Sikora combined the initial virus project with the principles of artificial life, creating systems of synthesis that reproduce the behavioural characteristics of living systems. In his previous digital paintings, an artificial life virus was introduced into an image. This population of active viruses then grew, reproduced and propagated within the space of the picture. The artist then froze a moment that he later created as a painting. Were the artist not to interfere, the process of propagation would continue until the original picture would be completely destroyed.

The notion of visual noise that not only strengthens unique personal powers of imagination and critical thinking, but also is a source of creation in itself, is a key element in the understanding of the new series of works exhibited at Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard.

Joseph Nechvatal’s work is in many major private and institutional collections around the world. An interview of the artist will accompany the exhibition.

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Pionnier dans le développement de l’art numérique, Joseph Nechvatal présentera à la Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard, lors de sa deuxième exposition personnelle, une série de nouvelles œuvres, la plupart accompagnées de vidéos numériques.

Art rétinal revisité : histoire de l’œil aura lieu du 4 septembre au 29 septembre 2010 et invitera les spectateurs à réfléchir sur l’importance de la relation entre le son et l’image dans le procédé de création.

Art rétinal revisité : histoire de l’œil offre aux spectateurs 15 peintures assistées par ordinateur (dont 10 sont accompagnées de vidéos). Les vidéos attachées aux peintures projettent un virus informatique qui dévore peu à peu la même image que l’on retrouve sur le tableau. Cette approche est relativement nouvelle, cependant on avait pu voir une première version de ce travail à l’exposition « Digital sublime » au MOCA de Taipei, en 2004.

Art rétinal revisité consiste en une série de peintures-animations représentant la rétine de l’œil humain combinées à d’autres images qui montrent le rectum humain. Un autre groupe de peintures traite du phénomène particulier des ombres.

De par le titre de cette exposition, Joseph Nechvatal s’oppose à la conception de Marcel Duchamp qui préconisait que l’art intelligent ne peut être esthétiquement plaisant.

Nechvatal travaille avec les images électroniques et la technologie informatique depuis 1986. Ses peintures assistées par ordinateur traduisent des images du corps humain en unités picturales que les virus informatiques transforment. La contamination de la tradition de la peinture sur toile par les nouvelles technologies digitales crée ainsi une interface entre le virtuel et le réel, ce que Joseph Nechvatal appelle le « viractuel ».

C’est en 1991, lors d’une résidence à l’atelier Louis Pasteur à Arbois et à la Saline Royale d’Arc et Senans, qu’il a développé avec Jean-Philippe Massonie un programme de virus informatiques. En 2001, Joseph Nechvatal et Stéphane Sikora ont conjugué le projet initial de virus informatiques avec les principes de la vie artificielle, c’est-à-dire la création de systèmes de synthèse qui reprennent les caractéristiques comportementales des systèmes vivants. Des ferments de vie artificielle sont introduits dans une image. Cette population de virus actifs se développe, se reproduit et se propage dans l’espace pictural. L’artiste fixe un moment qu’il transforme ensuite en une peinture. S’il n’intervenait pas, le processus de propagation continuerait jusqu’à détruire complètement l’image initiale.

L’idée de bruit ne renforce pas seulement le pouvoir personnel de l’imagination et la pensée critique, mais est aussi une source de création intrinsèque, qui est l’élément clé dans la compréhension des nouvelles œuvres exposées à la Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard.

Le travail de Joseph Nechvatal se trouve exposé dans des collections privées et des institutions du monde entier. Un entretien de l’artiste accompagne l’exposition.

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4 Questions from Galerie Richard about Art Rétinal Revisité: Histoire de l'Oeil

Galerie Richard 1. Art Rétinal Revisité: Histoire de l'Oeil - why did you choose this and not another title and theme for the exhibition? What message are you sending through this exhibition? And what is your ultimate goal with Art Rétinal Revisité?

Joseph Nechvatal: Clowns are rarely asked to explain their jokes and poets are never expected to explain their poems. Likewise I usually abhor these kinds of questions, but in this case I will attempt to oblige you.

Speaking most generally: the body of work brought together under the title Art Rétinal Revisité: Histoire de l'Oeil came into existence through a theoretical investigation into the role of noise in culture. This research adapted the audio noise understanding of noise music and applies it to visual art, architecture, and consciousness in a new book I have written entitled Immersion Into Noise (published by Open Humanities Press). A digital version of the book Immersion Into Noise is being included in the sale of the painting/animation assemblages that will be exhibited in this show.

The question I wish to put forth with this exhibition is: On a planet that is increasingly technologically linked and globally mediated, how might visual noises break and reconnect in distinctive and productive ways within practices located in the world of art and thought?

For many, if anything is representative of the art of today it is ambivalence. Ostensibly, everything today is permitted in art – and thus nothing is necessary. As a result, art and entertainment, it is said, have merged. Perhaps surprisingly, for me, the denial of this merger and the answer to the question posed above is to be found within the challenge of a noise style that strengthens unique personal powers of imagination and critical thinking through a beautiful self-perception. So in a way, this show is about looking at looking.

This approach was based on my observation that a noisy cultural constructivism is in the process of confronting unconnected ideal models of entertainment with information processing and self-re-organization through the digitalization of knowledge. I have tried to explore such questions through the connection between noise and violence and noise and the sacred.

Noise may break some connections, but connections will always continue to grow in other directions; creating new thoughts and new affects. The notion of noise as creation itself is thus an important one that needs to be reconsidered and reevaluated. The viral animations coupled with the canvases represent this function.

More specifically: Art Rétinal Revisité (Retinal Art Revisited) points quite obviously to Marcel Duchamp’s position that art that appeals to the intelligence (the mind) cannot as well appeal to the eye. I disagree with him here. Intelligent art need not be anti-retinal. Beautiful woman can be incredibly smart, as well.

Georges Bataille’s theories of excess are a key reference in my noise vision book sketched out above. That is why I honor his erotic fiction Histoire de l'Oeil (Story of the Eye) in the subtitle of the exhibition.

For Bataille, excess is the non-hypocritical human condition, which he took as being roused non-productive expenditure (excess) entangled with exhilaration. Excess is, for Bataille, not so much a surplus as an effective passage beyond established limits, an impulse which exceeds even its own threshold. Engaged sight works that way as well, as there is always something more to see.

Galerie Richard 2. The works you're planning to exhibit are quite diverse (the eye and the other image that remains ambiguous - are they lips? or a rectum?) - and what is the 'fil conducteur' between them? Why did you choose the lip/rectum images?

Joseph Nechvatal: Yes. The eyes are bracketed and centered by paintings-animations that investigate the lips of the human rectum. I recognized that the eye was the highest placed input valve on the human desiring-machine – and the rectum the lowest. And I wanted to even them out. I wanted to give them equal value. Both are controlled by psychic-influenced sphincters.

Galerie Richard 3. How do these works "revisit retinal art" to quote the title?

Joseph Nechvatal: They call to mind and make fun of Marcel Duchamp’s prejudice that smart art cannot also be beautiful to the eye.

Galerie Richard 4. For the September exhibition you have chosen to create a video for each painting and exhibit them together. This is a rather new approach. Could you explain how you came to this decision?

Joseph Nechvatal: Yes. I paired a large painting with a large projection of the computer virus project eating the same image that is on the painting first in 2004 at the Digital Sublime show at MOCA in Taipei. This is an application of my viractual position - a position that has been put forward in my book Towards an Immersive Intelligence: Essays on the Work of Art in the Age of Computer Technology and Virtual Reality that was published by Edgewise Press in New York in 2009.

Installation Views

Works in the show

black squint, 2009