Seth Price is a conceptual artist and writer whose multidisciplinary practice centres on modes of production, distribution, and communication, the impact of digital technology, and how the market ascribes meaning to art. He has participated in the Whitney Biennial (2002, 2008), the 54th Venice Biennale (2011), and dOCUMENTA (13) (2012).
Read MorePrice was born in the village of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, where he lived until he was two years old. He then moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where he attended Brookline public schools, before later attending Brown University, where he received his BA in 1998.
Since the early 2000s, the artist has delivered lectures at a number of universities, including MIT and Harvard University. Price lives and works in New York City.
Seth Price's experiments with materials are conducted through a wide range of media, including video, film, sculpture, installation, collage, and text, investigating how art and media are produced and distributed.
Strategies of dissemination form the point of departure for Price's seminal artwork. Dispersion (2002), which takes the form of an essay, calls on artists to find new ways of harnessing the capacity for meaning-making inherent in communications networks.
Widely circulated, Dispersion has been translated into seven languages and remixed in a variety of ways, including a 'Cult Classic' version from Burn Rate Berlin, which includes quotes from hip hop's enfant terrible, Kanye West.
Signature works also include his 'Vintage Bomber' (2005–2008) series, comprised of sheets of vacuum-formed polystyrene bearing the traces of bomber jackets moulded in metallic plastic, and the 'infinite' video essay, Redistribution (2008–ongoing), a surreal, meandering narrative that questions art world conventions and our relationship to the circulation of images, while also serving as a living document of Price's work and process.
Price has been described by artist, editor, writer, and filmmaker Emmanuel Olunkwa as a 'compressionist': someone who 'processes the world by collecting its varying shapes and colours' and produces objects or experiences that experiment with the intended function of their material or technology.
Since the beginning of his career in the early 2000s, Price has resisted categorisation and continues to explore diverse mediums from electronic music and fashion to computer screensavers and philosophical essays.
Writing has always been central to Price's practice, and he has published a number of books. His 2015 novella, Fuck Seth Price—a fictional essay-memoir hybrid in which the artist muses about the role of creatives in an increasingly digital world—serves as a companion piece to Price's online database, Organic Software (2015).
Comprised of an 'algorithmic perception tool' that publishes information on art collectors and their political donation history, Organic Software is in line with the wave of conceptual art rooted in technology dubbed 'art hacktivism'.
Seth Price has participated in the following select solo exhibitions, including No Technique, Aspen Art Museum (2019); Self as Tube, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris (2019); Danny, Mila, Hannah, Ariana, Bob, Brad, MoMA PS1, New York (2018); Seth Price — Social Synthetic, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2017); Wrok, Fmaily, Freidns, 356 Mission Road, Los Angeles (2016); Drawings: Studies for Works 2000—2015, Petzel Gallery, New York (2015); and Seth Price, Kunsthalle Zurich (2008).
The artist has also participated in the following group exhibitions, including Works on Paper, Petzel Gallery, New York (2021); Infinite Games, Capitain Petzel, Berlin (2020); Phantom Plane — Cyberpunk in the Year of Future, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2019); Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Massachusetts (2018); The Distance of a Day: Connections and Disconnections in Contemporary Art, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2016); A Sense of Things, Zabludowicz Collection, London (2014); Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection, New Museum, New York (2010); and Continuous Project and Art & Project Bulletin, CNEAI, Paris, France (2004).
Seth Price's website can be found here.
Ocula | 2021
