TRANSFER, Brooklyn’s latest addition to the www-to-AFK gallery space experiment, opened its doors last weekend with a solo show by Alexandra Gorczynski. Steadily exhibiting several times a year, the artist created all new work for “Truisms.” Standouts? A particularly likable canvas of flirty eyes and digital strokes, a classical visual of female anatomy with a smiley face mashed over vag and an epic, painted, pink and purple full-wall “desktop” mural with works as “icons” titled “painty.jpg” and related misc.
[Here, the author of this post spends several minutes typing and redacting words like “sexy” and angrily grumbling at herself.] There’s a lot of confrontational talk about gender balance in net art and gendered net stuff in general, but there’s nothing wrong about vibing off pretty aesthetics. This art is attractive. That’s good.
When asked to explain her work by the L Magazine, Gorczynski called it “sincere and emotional new-media folk art” which fits. There are signifiers in all the canvas works, but it’s the mixed-media installation in TRANSFER’s corner that Gorczynski created at 319 Scholes’ #GodMode Art Hack Day that successfully fuses those elements — an illuminated feat of tiny architecture, cut colored plastic glowing with projected eyes, throwing color shadows of computer brand insignia on the walls. Visually and technically, it’s the highlight of the show.
“It was no accident that we chose Alexandra as our first artist,” TRANSFER curatorial director Kelani Nichole, who has previously worked with F.A.T. artists and Computers Club, explained. “She more than anyone that we’ve worked with is really pushing on that boundary of what is digital art, what is physical art and does the dissection really matter,” managing director Jereme Mongeon adds.
I’ve watched Alexandra paint the desktop mural over the gallery’s live web stream and I tend to agree. Yet, it seems that rather than wanting to transgress the physical/internet boundaries, “Truisms” creates a bit of a feedback loop between physical work and its internet art history lore, but it’s still all very Alexandra.
When you’re looking at it, it gives you feelings. You can have a crush on this art.
TRANSFER’s show calendar is stocked for 2013. An ASCII visual poet A. Bill Miller is up next, as well anticipated shows by active artists and ANIMAL favorites Lorna Mills and Rollin Leonard. This was a very well attended event and it’s a good look. Keep on keeping on.
“Truisms,” Alexandra Gorczynski, through April 6, Transfer Gallery, Brooklyn (Video: Marina Galperina/ANIMALNewYork and Jonathan Minard, Video Edit: Aymann Ismail/ANIMALNewYork, Music: Holy Rattlesnakes)
