PETRA CORTRIGHT

1301PE is pleased to announce quack doctor violet “saltwater fish”,Petra Cortright’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. The exhibitionwill feature a new series of digital paintings by the Los Angeles-basedartist. At the core of Cortright’s distinct artistic practice is thecreation and distribution of digital files. Considered to be one of theearly proponents of what some term ‘post-Internet art’, Cortright roseto prominence with such performative self-portrait YouTube videos as VVEBCAM,2007, which she created using her computer’s webcam and default specialeffect tools. This body of work has also evolved into an ongoingcollaboration with fashion designer Stella McCartney, whereby webcamvideos of Cortright posing in the designer’s garments are circulated onsocial media and shown in stores worldwide. In recent years,Cortright’s practice has shifted towards the creation of digitalpaintings, using Adobe Photoshop and appropriated online source materialto re-visit the genres of landscape, still life and abstract painting.Working in a laborious but intuitive multi-faceted process, Cortrightmines the internet for images, patterns, marks, and color palettes toconstruct a new visual language. As the works in quack doctor violet “saltwater fish” articulate,Cortright has been particularly drawn to websites such as Pinterest.The material is then transformed into densely layered painterlycompositions – at times presenting themselves as all-over paintings à laAbstract Expressionism, other times as fantastical landscapes orcollage-like interior still lives. The resulting high-resolutionPhotoshop “mother file” gives rise to number of related works: fromanimated paintings (videos or Flash animations) that reveal theirmulti-layered process of creation, to two-dimensional paintings. Yeteven when printed on aluminum, linen, rag paper, or acrylic substrates,the works continue to maintain evidence of their very digital making:“Allthe physical pieces are unique, but there are deep elements of adigital process that I would never want to hide or remove—instead theyare celebrated.” – Petra CortrightWhether in the form of videos,GIFs, Flash animations or printed two-dimensional objects, Cortright’sworks continuously exploit the archetypes and unconscious ways of seeingembedded in both contemporary visual culture by hacking its very visualvocabulary.Petra Cortright (Santa Barbara, CA,1986) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She studied Fine Arts atParsons School of Design, The New School, New York, NY (2008) and theCalifornia College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2004). Cortright’swork has been included in, amongst others, Electronic Superhighway, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2016); Brushes, New Museum, NY (online exhibition); The Metabolic Age, MALBA, Buenos Aires; NIKI, LUCY, LOLA, VIOLA, Depart Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; On YouTube. Kunst und Playlists aus 10 Jahren, Kunsthaus Langenthal, Switzerland (all 2015); Full of Peril and Weirdness: Painting as Universalism, M WOODS, Beijing (2014); Fútbol: The Beautiful Game, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (2014); Im Inneren der Stadt, Künstlerhaus Bremen (2014); Art Post-Internet, UllensCenter for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing (2014); 12th Bienniale deLyon (2013); Beholder, Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh(2011); New Wave, The Internet Pavilion, The 53rd Venice Biennial (2009).