A Net Art Show on the Internet Review is a new ongoing series of reviews of net art shows…
on the internet.
Art Baby is an online exhibition space that supports artists who “consider digitality to be a main focus of their practice” “in the beginning stages of their career.”
Currently on view: Aimee Leigh.
Expectingly, everything references the internet and many of the artists previously shown here exude an aesthetic — the subversive cam-girl, the faux femme naiveté, etc — but Leigh’s collection here seem more precise and cohesive. It seems more focused than that of an “Internet Super User” whose body of work is more of an ongoing, expulsive, expressive stream of related media as opposed to individual pieces. Instead of pooled run-off, Leigh’s pieces are stand-alones that make sense together — you know, like they do in physical shows of physical things, off the internet.
There’s a soft frosted lilac-pink melancholy in the glitch abstract contrasting with it’s natural geometric choppiness. It gives feelings. That hue runs over into the photos. I like how there is no mimicry and fetishization of the teengirl platonic form in either of the photographs, miraculously, because even though they are both mise en scènes of young girls doing young girl things — unicorns, lollipops, pink, pink, pink, whatnot — they have subtlety. It may be a personal preference, but they feel earnest and work musically with the screenshot of the failed “young girls loving themselves” Google search result.
And let’s not be coy here — the purse, the rose, the oval dribbles, the pink crease — all these are blatant cunt metaphors, amirite? So it’s another show show about youth and female sexuality, but it’s communicating something specific, especially with the cam girl on classical painting, the digital collage. That one reminds me of Chris Marker’s Passengers series, linking old classic art ideals of desired beauty and the pedestrian ones from everyday-internet. It’s a “if this than that” thing and it justifies the intimacy of cam girl exhibitionism: After all, a cam girl consciously baring her breasts on the internet, compared to some anonymous muse painted by a male artist centuries ago, has much more agency.
Or something like that.
