ARTIE VIERKANT

Vierkant sets out to challenge the distinctions between object and document, the virtual and material, along with our existing ideas on authorship and propriety. His work spans a variety of media: co-existing photographic or sculptural techniques with unconventional materials ranging from circulating JPEGs to the negotiated limits of patents and trademarks.

Central to this pursuit is the artist’s assertion that an object’s physical manifestation is no more or less consequential than its representations. For Vierkant, the representation itself can exist “without reference to the ‘original’, so that we can no longer identify anything as an “original copy”. This is most evident in his series, Image Objects, ongoing since 2011. These works are made as prints using contemporary commercial printing technologies commonly applied for advertising and luxury signage. Subsequently the works are documented in photographic images which are harshly and abstractly retouched, often to the point that the original object is more or less unrecognizable and the space of the installation itself appears blended with the object. The documentation of the art becomes a work in its own right, with object and image equally part of the overall work, calling into question the ability of the one to supersede the other, and collapsing notions of value.

“[today] it is assumed that the work of art lies equally in the version of the object one would encounter at a gallery or museum, the images and other representations disseminated through the Internet and print publications, bootleg images of the object or its representations, and variations on any of these as edited and recontextualized by any other author. The Image Object series is intended to embrace this condition, and utilize the venue of dissemination as a platform for work.” says Vierkant.

For his exhibition at the gallery, Vierkant will present a new group of largely monochromatic works that expand on the artist’s Image Objects series. One sequence of works, titled Image Objects Sunday 31 December 2017 2:42PM – 7:01PM, carries an entire wall with a series of dark blue forms which proceed in sequence from each other, all coming from the same source file and constituting exact rotations of each of their component layers. These works are the first Vierkant has made since 2013 that share the rectangular motif and profile employed in some of his earliest work. Unlike previous works that explored incorporating ranges of colors, including at one time a rainbow gradient aesthetic, each of these ignore a huge percentage of the color spectrum made possible by commercial printing.

Alongside his photographs, Vierkant will exhibit new large mirror pieces that appear to have forms of pure light emanating from their surface. These sculptures employ the aesthetics and material properties of a ‘smart mirror’, a common technological trope in science fiction, and speculative consumer product. However instead of displaying time, infographics, or other familiar information, Vierkant has created forms on the surface of the mirror that are fixed and not reactive, mapped gestures transformed into a vector graphics.

A third and independent work is the Image Object app. Available for free, the viewer may load the app onto their smartphone whilst visiting the show, and experience an augmented reality of shapes and layers unfolding around them in real time. As the phone’s camera locates and calibrates the space of the viewer, the aesthetic experience is akin to walking around within the layered installation views Vierkant disseminates, with layers of abstraction appearing over the works and suspended in space throughout the room.