GROUP EXHIBITION

World on a Wire features 11 works, of which 7 are commissions, by global artists who have expressed themselves through a variety of digital mediums. Their work explores the possibilities and poetics of simulation as artistic practice. The inaugural edition of World on a Wire features curatorial and program contributions by the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

‘The exhibition aims to explore artistic practices engaged with emergent born-digital technologies,’ said Cornelia Schneider, Vice President and the Head of Global Experiential Marketing at Hyundai Motor. ‘Through our partnership with Rhizome, we hope to offer new way of experiencing digital art and connect people through inspiring cultural experiences at the three Hyundai Motorstudios around the globe and in the online space’.

‘Creating World on a Wire, and this new partnership with Hyundai Motor, was an opportunity for Rhizome to support artists working with new technologies at the very highest level,’ said Michael Connor, Rhizome’s Artistic Director. ‘In this exhibition, we were able to bring together installations that mix traditional artistic techniques with high-tech methods to respond to critical issues in today’s digital culture.’

One of the highlights of the exhibition is art pieces that involve mixed reality technologies, such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). These include I’m my loving memory (2020–2021), new plexiglass sculptures with AR interaction from New York-based Rachel Rossin; Nike (2018/2021) by Los Angeles-based Theo Triantafyllidis, a trompe l’oeil sculpture of the artist’s Ork avatar at work in their studio, viewed through a movable, large-scale flat-panel screen; and Dungeon: Maximalism HyperBody (2021) by Beijing-based Pete Jiadong Qiang, a vivid mixed-reality architecture, comprising a physical installation as well as virtual environments experienced through a VR headset.

Other artists have leveraged AI and other forms of generative simulation in their work. New York-based ZZYW (Zhenzhen Qi & Yang Wan) will present ThingThingThing (2019), a computational system in which entities generated by user submissions interact in an infinite three-dimensional world. World on a Wire will also include Those Who (2019) by Sascha Pohflepp (1978-2019), Matthew Lutz, and Alessia Nigretti, a self-aware 3D ecosystem built on the collection of the State Darwin Museum in Moscow; and Butterfly Room: Special Edition (2014/2021) by New York-based Tabor Robak, a work of speculative biology in the artist’s sculptural, pristine, super-saturated CGI aesthetic.

Artists that have deployed interdisciplinary hybrid formats include: Moscow-based Mariia Fedorova’s Pandemic Chronotope (2021), a web project and installation on the impact of Covid-19 on daily life in Russia; Seoul-based JooYoung Oh’s Unexpected Scenery (2019) a sci-fi retro-seeming videogame on AI; and — (2021) by Lu Fei & Lei Jianhao, a kinetic sculpture driven by an AI system responding to the electrical signals emitted by three potted plants. Two sculptural works that incorporate digital technologies in distinct ways round out the exhibition. Ye Nan’s Breeze Life (2020) is a kinetic sculpture that offers a synchronous simulation of the artist’s movement, speed, and trajectory—an artwork that simulates the artist. Juniper (2019), by Timur Si-Qin, is a 3D-printed replica of a tree from the ranch of Georgia O’Keeffe. Though it uses digital techniques, the work evokes a long artistic tradition of using simulation as a means to give form to a complex and spiritual relationship with the natural world.

A full program of talks and workshops related to World on a Wire are also available on the website. These events include a virtual curatorial walkthrough from Michael Connor; artist talks with Rachel Rossin and Pete Jiadong Qiang; and creative workshops on AI and mixed reality architecture by ZZYW and Qiang respectively.