When painting meets digital


Who are we but masters of our universe? The current climate of contemporary art shows this affirmation to be eminently possible by virtue of digital technology—a fathomless well where a labyrinthine network of information becomes a utopia unto itself, an inversion of the maxim “Knowledge is power.” Today power is applied knowledge. We digitize therefore we are.

As we forge full steam ahead into the twenty-first century, 2001 and beyond, the digital zeitgeist is coalescing into an omnipresent image-making force replete with synthetic mind-altering visuals manifested from virtual space. The progression of avant-garde movements has accelerated as they are quickly gulped up into mainstream trends; high culture is a fluid dynamo, absorbing then regurgitating preceding traditional forms. We have embraced gadgetry and made fashion out of technology. We have unlearned to forget and use everything available. Digital technology has, like modernism, filtered down to the mainstream. What was once “high-tech” is now “user-friendly.”

The fact that the digital dimension has become accessible to all is changing our perception of space in much the same way that perspective—the first virtual reality—did in the Renaissance; and now it’s come full circle. Our interactions with objects and spaces have been palpably heightened in artificial ways…


The full text is published in "tema celeste" No. 85, May-June 2001.




Max Henry