Joseph Nechvatal: Paintings: 1986-1987

February 9 - March 20, 1988

Joseph Nechvatal’s work explores technology’s paramount influence on our ways of seeing in this “Age of Information.” A computer is used to digitize and magnify the artist’s initial drawings and/or photographs. The computerized information is then “painted” by robotic arms onto canvases up to 12-feet-wide.

Nechvatal’s paintings have shimmering, spectral presences. Images are layered in a web-like, labyrinthian manner, drifting in and out of the viewer’s field of perception. The work has a holographic quality, due to the ethereal spatial handling of juxtaposed two and three-dimensional images and the illusions generated by the dot matrix.

These paintings address both sides of the increased possibilities that technology affords us: on one hand, freedom and extended perception; on the other, dehumanization and impending nuclear disaster.