grid is life

Written by marina may
december 15, 2018

In thinking through systems of organization,

from spreadsheets, to city planning, to Instagram, the grid reigns supreme. For their curatorial debut, Marissa Dembkoskiand Paal Williams, are investigating the parameters and expectations of “the grid” in their exhibition PIXEL, which opens Saturday, December 15 at G-CADD.

“We are thinking about grids and systems of order. How they define space and contribute to our system of reality,” says Williams. “A grid is a definition of volume, as a container, a system of moving between two dimensions and three dimensions and how that defines how that space is occupied and how much space is occupied.”

 Though their initial access point into this topic of inquiry was photography, Paal and Marissa have expanded the schedule of works to include mediums like 3-D printed sculptures, projections, and textile works. They chose artists Kara Gut, Julian Van Der Moore, Drew Nikonowicz, Zak Alexander Rose, Matt KayhowBrett, and Chloe Simmons, who, in one way or another, deal with the dichotomy between objectivity and subjectivity. 

Using the pixel as the building block upon which a degree of veracity or fallacy can be constructed or manipulated, the two present a show that tests the bounds of structure and challenges the potential of photography as a truth telling device.

 “A pixel is this definitive form and it takes thousands and millions of them to create an image or digital document,” says Marissa. “A pixel is a very objective thing, and photographs are mostly considered objective… they can be used as evidence, thinking about police photography as such. But our culture is beginning to realize that a photograph isn’t this truthful thing, because we are limited to this square or structure. The flattening of the 3-D experience to a 2-D experience, you lose a lot of that information.”

Many of the works deal with reckoning with the compression of information. As a three dimensionalexperience is processed through the lens of a camera, the information is flattened. In the translation, information must be cropped, pared down. In that way every image is altered from the reality of the experience, creating an entirely new entity that is ultimately always subjective. 

One of the most interesting bodies of work in the show that examines with the process of translation are the 3-D steel wire sculptures rendered by Matt KayhowBrett. His process illustrates the reverse of compression, acting as a foil to many of the photographically based pieces in the show.

“The 3-D piece called Push Notificationis the rendered experience of something that you receive on your phone. It’s this physical structure,” says Dembkoski.

“Matt, a lot of the time, is taking mathematical shapes that are symbols of perfection or symbols of generated math problems or impossible objects. Some of these are also generated from the default shapes that you can start with in 3-D modeling software. The Taurus is one of those, the cylinder is another. Obviouslythe spikes on that are a mediation on his part,” says Williams.

Though the works technically occupy space, they are designed to challenge optical perception, especially when photographed. 

“They change when the camera is a mediator. They compress and invert when you look at them. The barbs too, they can invert depending on which way you look at them. There’s a lot of optical effect going on,” says Williams. “Matt talks about the way that the objects are impossible in some ways. They completely flatten out. It’s interesting as a definition of a container, of a volume, of a size, that doesn’t occupy that space. It’s an object designed in thinking about how it’s flattened.”

 “It’s interesting to think of these in relation to Drew’s work,” says Marissa. “[Drew] is photographing these impossible landscapes. Everyone is working with some element of the impossible and challenging perfection in some way.” 

Julian Van Der Moore’s Induced Parallax, also challenges optical perception. He sources a five second 3-D scan of a cave, mirrors the image, and expands the footage into a 15 minuteloop, altering the focus of the image throughout the duration of the projection. The result is a mesmerizing Rorschach test. As the viewer travels down the length of the passage, they are presented with images that are constantly shifting with no central point of focus. In this way, his work challenges the perception of information. In altering the focus and mirroring the images, he complicates perspective. 

Williams suggests that the work essentially questions the accuracy of any given image.

“We’re all aware of a photograph’s authorship and subjectivity that’s implicated there,” says Williams. “If a photograph is flattened 2-D information, then if we add more information, if we add depth and spatial information, if we add an ability to rotate the scene, if we add 360 perspective, the assumption is that it should be inherently more truthful. In reality we’re still interpreting these scenes. We’re rendering them with our own perspectives. For me, that’s kind of what the Rorschach is getting at, it’s hinting a lot at this spatial truthfulness.”

Julian’s work, in tandem with the other works in PIXEL, aimsto establish a set of constraints, then work within those constraints to organize and contextualize a set of information that may or may not be present in reality. They aim to understand the language of “clipart” and our inevitable mortality (as evidenced through the work of Zak Alexander Rose), or the way in which technology mediates the dissemination of information, or the nexus of connection via the grid.

“If we’re going to get art history theory about it, the grid is a system of perfection, of rational thinking, and of trying to discern theworld through logic. Obviously postmodernism is pushing against that and rejecting a lot of that,” says Williams. “All of these artists are using grids as a system of order to try to understand the chaos through order, but they aren’t putting any sort of handed or absolute statements to that. These are uncertain things, and this is a way that we can categorize and understand them. They offer suggestions with how to engage with the subject matter. In this case it’s space and photography, and yeah, grids.”

PIXEL is one of four exhibitions opening this evening (December 15th between 6-10pm) at Granite City Art and Design District, Exhibition #19: Guest Curators.

@ PLAQUE: Pixel, Curated by Paal Williams & Marissa Dembkoski
Featuring work by: Kara Gut, Julian Van Der Moere, Drew Nikonowicz, Zak Alexander Rose, Matt KayhoeBrett, and Chloe Simmons. 

@ INSURANCE: An exhibition curated by Martin Lang
Featuring work by: Thomas Wharton and Kevin Kao 

@ GREASE: G-CADD's Winter Wonderland!!! 

@ STNDRD: Katie Hargrave