The Art Happens Here
The Art Happens Here: Net Art’s Archival Poetics
Vicki Myhren Gallery, University of Denver
2121 E. Asbury Avenue, Denver, Colorado 80210
January 16-March 1, 2020
Curated by Michael Connor and Aria Dean
Admission: Free
Review by Rachel Olson
The Art Happens Here: Net Art’s Archival Poetics at the Vicki Myhren Gallery features artwork by sixteen international artists and artist groups pulled from the Net Art Anthology—a online exhibit of one hundred works that represent the history of internet art.[1] Organized by the New York-based art organization Rhizome, The Art Happens Here is a touring exhibition that was originally staged at the New Museum in New York City.
In the foreground is Shu Lea Cheang’s Garlic=Rich Air (2002/2003/2019) that includes an electric cart filled with bulbs of garlic and a single-channel video of garlic planting as well as a wifi hotspot and a website. Text on the cart reads “After The Crash” “Trade Garlic.” The work posits a future where the currency is organic garlic and the only form of internet is community wireless. The artist Melanie Hoff created an online game in 2019 in response to Cheang’s piece called Garlic Trust—you can visit getgarlic.rhizome.org to play the game from home. Image by Rachel Olson.
Alexei Shulgin, 386 DX, 1990s consumer computer, custom software, umbrella, and pallet, ca. 1998. Called “the world’s first cyberpunch band,” the computer “sings” jilted audio covers of songs like “California Dreamin’” while a scrolling screen graphic reads “Spare Some Change for A Poor Computer!” Image by Rachel Olson.
Entering the stark gallery space is initially disconcerting, with the sounds of whirring machines in the background and robotic noises from an old computer. A periodic low rumbling permeates the space and the siloed stations of archaic technology give one pause. Each piece is in fact derived from different components of technology and seems to play off of the original functionality of the devices by twisting them into something poetic. By using the digital realm in unexpected ways, the works in the exhibition ask us to revisit our usual notions of art.
Aleksandra Domanović’s Grobari, 2009, is made of a stack of inkjet-printed paper and is one example of her “printable monuments”—PDFs consisting of thousands of pages that can be printed at any location to create the work. Image by Rachel Olson.
“Born-digital” is a term that refers to things that were originally created digitally, as opposed to analog works that are converted into a digital format. The works in The Art Happens Here all fall into the born-digital category. They range from a computer-animated poem called Reabracadabra from 1985 by artist Eduardo Kac to Alexei Shulgin’s singing computer from the 1990s that covers pop songs to more serious pieces like a stack of inkjet prints from 2009 by Aleksandra Domanović depicting smoke from fires set by extremist soccer fans in Yugoslavia who took part in the armed conflicts there.
Siebren Versteeg, Daily Times (Performer), custom software and digital image, 2012. Image by Rachel Olson.
One of my favorite works in the exhibition is Siebren Versteeg’s Daily Times (Performer) which melds the traditional art of painting with digital media. Each day this work takes an image of the front page of the New York Times and slowly paints over it according to a software algorithm. Since the image changes daily with the current headlines and with the various, overlaid strokes, one gets a sense of a fleeting moment in time that is temporarily captured (and obscured) for the viewer. It leaves us pondering how our current technological devices may help us to understand, transform, and make use of information well into the future.
Rachel Olson is a freelance graphic designer in Denver. She teaches design at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design and holds a B.A. in Fine Arts, along with an M.F.A. in Graphic Design. Her areas of focus are publication, logo + identity, marketing, and exhibit design.
[1] The artists and groups included in the exhibition at Vicki Myhren Gallery are Morehshin Allahyari; Shu Lea Cheang; Aleksandra Domanović; Entropy8Zuper!; Alex Galloway, Mark Tribe, and Martin Wattenberg; Melanie Hoff; Eduardo Kac; Olia Lialina; Brian Mackern; M.T.A.A. (an artist duo); Bogosi Sekhukhuni; Alexei Shulgin; Wolfgang Staehle; Siebren Versteeg; Miao Ying; and YoHa (Graham Harwood and Matsuko Yokokoji).
