Trevor Paglen, A Study of Invisible Images (Installation View), via Art Observed

Drawing on the increasingly complex relationship between human relations, technological ascendency and the exercise of power that ultimately serves as a negotiating space between these two forces, Trevor Paglen’s work has repeatedly explored how the modern computer processor is ever more embroiled in the fabric of human decision-making and world-building. Having traveled the globe, and even fired a satellite into space to look down on it from outside its atmospheric confines, Paglen’s work delves into the physical architectures, and often otherworldly effects that the modern state of surveillance and speed renders on human understandings of time, space, and even our own perceptions of identity or self.

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Trevor Paglen, NSA-Tapped Fiber Optic Cable Landing Site, New York City, New York, United States (2015), via Art Observed

Continuing his investigation of covert military and intelligence operations, Trevor Paglen returns to Metro Pictures for his second exhibition with the gallery, charging his work with the intricacies of research and formal explorations of color and abstraction, while focusing particularly on the geography and aesthetics of the National Security Agency’s global surveillance programs.

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Trevor Paglen at Metro Pictures (Installation View), via Metro Pictures

American artist, geographer, and author Trevor Paglen’s first solo exhibition at Metro Pictures has opened this month, a selection of large color prints and black-and-white diptychs related to his ongoing project, The Last Pictures.  Compiling a striking collection of photographs from across the wide spectrum of human experience, Paglen creates a static document of mankind, flung into the Earth’s orbit.

Trevor Paglen opening at Metro Pictures (Installation View), via Daniel Creahan for ArtObserved

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Trevor Paglen’s The Last Pictures launched into orbit today from Kazakhstan at at 1:15 pm EST, with liftoff at 1:30 pm EST (US time/date). It may be viewed at: www.echostar.com/launch (more…)

Creative Time will launch a new work by artist Trevor Paglen into outer space on November 21, 2012. The Last Pictures will enter perpetual orbit and remain on view for five billion years, affixed to the exterior of the communications satellite EchoStar XVI. The work consists of one hundred photographs micro-etched onto a silicon disc encased in a gold-plated shell. (more…)

Trevor Paglen discussed his latest project, The Last Pictures, with filmmaker Werner Herzog on the Bryant Park terrace last night. The project, an ultra archival disc that has been micro-etched with 100 photographs and encased in gold, was commissioned and presented by Creative Time. Poet Tracy K. Smith introduced the dialogue with a reading of her work, and Creative Time Chief Curator, Nato Thompson, made introductory remarks.

Image: Werner Herzog at The Last Pictures event presented by Creative Time, photo by Art Observed

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Trevor Paglen‘s ‘The Last Pictures’ to launch into outer space attached to a television satellite in September 2012 as part of a Creative Time project. Paglen, in collaboration with MIT and various scientific specialists, designed an ultra-archival disc of images, capable of surviving billions of years in space.

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