Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens (Installation view), via Sprüth Magers

For the most recent new exhibition in Berlin, Sprüth Magers has brought together work from thirteen artists under the title Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens.  Curated by Goodroom and Johannes Fricke Waldthausen, the exhibition features works by Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin, Andy Hope 1930, Oliver Laric, Jon Rafman, and Andro Wekua, among others.  Intended to navigate visitors through the intersecting narratives within the realm of surrealist animation, abstraction and the ideas of “New Materialism” as expressed through the greater logistics of the world wide web, the exhibition references the notion of the screen as a critical tool of the conscious and unconscious, as well as a surface for projections of communication and technological abstraction.   (more…)

Tullio Lombardo’s Renaissance statue of Adam, which famously fell from its pedestal at The Met and was smashed to pieces, is back on view after a lengthy restoration, accompanied by a digital video project and performance that gives the work a multi-faceted, occasionally irreverent voice.  The project is a continuation of The Met’s ongoing emphasis on direct engagement of visitors with its collection through performance and new technology. (more…)

Lucas Samaras, XYZ 1700 (2015), via Pace Gallery

On view at its 25th Street galleries, Pace is currently presenting Lucas Samaras’s exhibition Albums 2, featuring over 700 digitally enhanced photographs and a mirrored room installation.  Samaras’s exhibition showcases his continued exploration of manipulated imagery as a way of plumbing his own existence, this time playing through his autobiographical accounts with digital technologies. (more…)

Mark Flood, Shrek Your Privilege (2015), via Art Observed

For years, Mark Flood has mined a specific aspect of the artistic vocabulary when it comes to pop culture, a sort of irreverent mirror that plays the often cloying imagery of advertising, corporate branding, and the Hollywood star machine against itself, often performed against the backdrop of more formally-oriented paintings and text-based works, a combination of styles that spreads the artist across a spectrum that seems to mix commentary with composition in any number of permutations. (more…)

Tabor Robak, Drinking Bird (Season) (2015)

Currently on view at Team Gallery is a new body of works by Brooklyn-based artist Tabor Robak, the digitally-focused artist whose LCD video pieces mine the aesthetics and possibilities for interface design in the 21st century. Computer-generated graphics and lifestyle technologies doubtlessly strike as the main threads in Robak’s work, yet his spontaneous employment of ubiquitous cultural icons, and mundane components into his otherwise convoluted compositions expands the array of his statement. The artist’s use of oblique narratives, hinted at through lines of text and simple graphic juxtapositions, fall in line with the phantasmagorical, responding to the utilitarian aspect of high-tech elements, while suggesting a certain submission by the user, a transposition of their role into that of a passive viewer or consumer. (more…)

The WSJ looks at the recent focus on algorithms as hot items on the art market, as collectors purchase classic codes and objects emblazoned with famous code.  “It is a whole new dimension we are trying to grapple with,” says Cooper Hewitt curatorial director Cara McCarty. “The art term I keep hearing is code.” (more…)

A new study on the use of digital technologies in American art museums is set for release this week, an in-depth study that looks at museum projects nationwide and their effectiveness in incorporating new immersive media.  The study covers 41 museum projects, from a “digital census” of French sculpture at Dallas’s Nasher Center to new iPad based wall labeling at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts.   (more…)

Ryder Ripps, Alone Together (Installation View), via Art Observed

The New York-based artist and designer Ryder Ripps capped his first solo gallery show with Postmasters earlier this year, and has spent the past two months in residency at the Red Bull Studios, where his current show, Alone Together, has turned the space into a self-reflexive digital laboratory, complete with test subjects, flickering hardware, and its own, occasionally fractured ideologies. (more…)

Frank Benson, Juliana, via Art Observed

If the New Museum Triennial is to be believed, 2015 might in fact be the year that artists put the pervasive notions of “cyber-dread” to death in the contemporary discourse.  Curated by Ryan Trecartin and New Museum Curator (and former Rhizome head) Lauren Cornell, the exhibition combines aspirational commodities, linguistic play and digital microcosms into a fascinatingly deep exhibition, one that feels particularly appropriate as the 21st century turns 15. (more…)

Louise Lawler, Dots and Slices (Traced) (2006/2013), via Sprüth Magers

In 2013, Louise Lawler performed a series of “tracings” at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, taking previously executed photographs from Lawler’s broad body of work, and converting the image down to a simple vector graphic in partnership with artist and children’s book illustrator Jon Buller.  These tracings are currently the subject of the artist’s most recent solo exhibition at Sprüth Magers Berlin, as Levine returns to her particularly subtle brand of institutional critique. (more…)

More than 40,000 works from the Smithsonian’s Asian Art Collection have been digitized, and will be placed online for public use by New Year’s Day.  “The depth of the data we’re releasing illuminates each object’s unique history, from its original creator to how it arrived at the Smithsonian,” Courtney O’Callaghan, the director of digital media and technology, says.  (more…)

The New York Times profiles a new effort underway in the Netherlands to encourage public arts patronage through a subscription-based service.  The program, titled We Are Public, offers low-price access to a range of cultural events, while promising to contribute â‚¬18,000 to local arts institutions.  “There’s a tendency on all levels of society that people want to take more control over what’s going on, and people are collectively funding stuff they think is important,” says co-founder Bas Morsch. (more…)

The New York Times reports on the recent increase in attempts by museums around New York to increase its focus on digital elements in the presentation of exhibitions and installations, fusing strong curatorship with immersive digital engagement projects.   “You want the way people live their lives to happen in the museum,” says Carrie Rebora Barratt, the Met’s deputy director for collections and administration. (more…)

Cory Arcangel, Asshole 2 / Lakes (2014), via Team

Given Cory Arcangel’s past exhibition tendencies, the work on view at the artist’s newest Team Gallery solo exhibition downtown is something of a concise affair.  Gone are the artist’s abstracted consumer objects, video game hacks and gradient paintings, substituted for a series of simple flat-panel televisions, each bearing a pixelated digital image, and offset by a deep red carpeting that runs along the gallery’s floor.  On-screen, the smiling faces of Hilary Clinton (or rather, Hilary Clinton’s book jacket), Jay-Z and P. Diddy, among others, stare out of the viewer, as a delicately waving digital effect below them gives the impression of a liquid reflection. (more…)

Russian entrepreneur, mathematician, engineer and collector, Inna Bazhenova has purchased the Art Newspaper, with the intent of helping in the development of the site’s online offering.  “The quality of its journalism and scholarship are outstanding and its excellent coverage of international art news is vital in our global environment,” she said in a statement. “I want to reassure you that The Art Newspaper will retain complete editorial independence, now and for as long as I own it. My aim is to invest in it so that it may remain as good as it is today.” (more…)

This month’s cover of Garage Magazine has been unveiled, with a pair of Jeff Koons artworks gracing the cover, and a virtual artwork that allows viewers to view it from all angles using a mobile device.  The piece, Lady Bug, is Koons first venture into virtual art, and must be unlocked by scanning various parts of the magazine with a smartphone application.  “Garage has always aspired to push the physical limits of a magazine,” says owner Dhasha Zhukova. “We are inspired by the infinite possibilities of the digital realm and look forward to exploring new media in this issue and beyond. We are excited to have collaborated with Jeff Koons on his first virtual sculpture.” (more…)

The New York Times notes the differing approaches to the internet embraced by local museums, studying the Brooklyn Museum and The Met’s outreach programs and online exhibition supplements in an attempt to understand how modern museums are moving online.  “Most of the people who are interested in art aren’t going to get on a plane and come here,” says Met chief digital officer Sree Sreenivasan. “It would be great if they came. But it’s O.K. if what we’re doing is reaching them in just a digital way.” (more…)

The Morgan Library and Museum has completed digitization on its expansive collection of Rembrandt etchings, which will be available online beginning May 22nd.  “Completion of our Rembrandt project is another important milestone in the Morgan’s ongoing commitment to make its collections available to an ever wider audience,” says Director William M. Griswold. “We are extraordinarily pleased to be able to share them with scholars, students, and anyone interested in his art.” (more…)

The Met has made 400,000 public domain images available for free online, part of Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC), a new initiative to increase access to the images for non-commercial uses.  “Through this new, open-access policy, we join a growing number of museums that provide free access to images of art in the public domain,” says Director Thomas P. Campbell.  “I am delighted that digital technology can open the doors to this trove of images from our encyclopedic collection.”   (more…)

Jordan Wolfson, (Female Figure) (2014), via Art Observed

How does memory function in the 21st century?  How does nostalgia?  These are questions bound up in the work of Jordan Wolfson, on view now at David Zwirner.  Spread along a series of assemblages, video, and the artist’s notoriously eerie animatronic robot, the show is a striking step for the artist, showing his unique approach to art-making in an ever-stronger expressive capacity.

Jordan Wolfson, Raspberry Poseur (2012), via David Zwirner (more…)

The New York Times reports on the growing practice for museums to live-stream and archive lectures online, allowing interested parties to view them around the world.  The article also explores MoMA’s recently initiated online tours and courses, and a recent collaboration by the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the TED lectures brand. (more…)

In partnership with Creative Time Reports, Trevor Paglen and The Intercept have embarked on a project to illustrate and visualize the various surveillance structures and institutions currently active in the United States.  Providing images of the headquarters for the largest organizations in the U.S. surveillance network, Paglen is seeking to provide a tangible visual signature for these often abstracted institutions.  “I hope these images first of all will be helpful for people to wrap their heads around what some of these agencies are, to point to them and acknowledge that they exist, that they’re doing work,” Paglen says.  “Beyond that I hope that they can contribute to a wider cultural vocabulary that we can use to try and see these institutions, to understand them and the effect they have on the society around them.” (more…)

A new venture by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is looking to launch a new examination of conservation in technology, part of a Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded project called The Artist’s Initative.  Examining technological leaps in design, tech and the work of various artists that drive these media forward, the project will embrace a broad series of concerns facing the modern museum.  (more…)

The Museum of Modern Art has hired Fiona Romeo as the head of the museum’s Digital Content and Strategy, a new position that will place her at the head of the museum’s digital media department.  “Fiona’s appointment builds upon the Museum’s pioneering work in the digital realm, and is a reflection of the dynamic and vital role that digital content plays in the way people can participate in the life of the Museum,” said MoMA director Glenn Lowry in a release. (more…)