Various Artists: Commercial Break

Our world is increasingly shaped by the display of visual information. Digital advertising has been seamlessly integrated into both public and private spheres, while modes of communication, from social media to the smartphone, have changed the way we think about our virtual and physical worlds. Commercial Break, a citywide exhibition, presents 23 artists who have created platform-specific interruptions within the advertising cycles of some of New York City’s most highly visible and technically advanced digital screens. These include a large billboard in Times Square; Barclays Center’s “Oculus,” a 360-degree LED marquee in Prospect Heights; 19 digital screens at Westfield World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan; hundreds of LinkNYC’s Link kiosks in all five boroughs; and PublicArtFund.org, where the work will be embedded as a pop-up “ad.”

Commercial Break draws inspiration from the organization’s seminal exhibition series Messages to the Public, which ran on the 800-square-foot animated Spectacolor lightboard in Times Square from 1982-1990. Similarly disrupting the daily flow of advertising, but reflecting today’s visual saturation of digital screens, the artists in Commercial Break represent a new generation working in digital media to create interventions that resonate with today’s world. The array of commissions reflect and respond to issues relevant to our current moment: the shifting notions of online and offline spheres, the circulation of images, as well as the pervasiveness of advertising and its power to affect the political, social, and personal realms of society.

Commercial Break is Public Art Fund’s largest group exhibition to date and marks its first time presenting work in all five boroughs simultaneously.

Select works are available to view on Google Cultural Institute. Click here.

Curated by Public Art Fund Associate Curators Emma Enderby and Daniel S. Palmer

FEATURED ARTISTS & SITES:
Times Square: Cory Arcangel, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Brian Bress, Sue de Beer, Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley, Heather Phillipson, and Martine Syms

Barclays Center’s Oculus: Meriem Bennani, Kate Cooper, Cécile B. Evans, GCC, Agnieszka Polska, Tabor Robak, and Jacolby Satterwhite

Westfield World Trade Center: Hayal Pozanti

LinkNYC’s Link kiosks: Lucas Blalock, Antoine Catala and Gabriel Kahan, Awol Erizku, Ed Fornieles, David Horvitz, Britta Thie, and Hannah Whitaker

PublicArtFund.org: Casey Jane Ellison

VISITING THE EXHIBITION
Commercial Break is on view February 6 – March 5, 2017.

The Times Square billboard is located at the southeast corner of 47th Street and 7th Avenue. 15-second videos are being shown every 5 to 7 minutes, with a different artist each day of the week (See schedule below).

Barclays Center’s “Oculus” is located at 620 Atlantic Avenue, at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues in Brooklyn. 30-second videos are being presented the last 45 seconds of each half hour (6:59.15 – 6:59.45, 7:29.15 – 7:29.45, 7:59.15 – 7:59.45, etc.) from 6:00 AM – 12:00 AM(midnight) daily, and a different artist is shown each day of the week.

Westfield World Trade Center is located at 185 Greenwich Street in Manhattan at the World Trade Center complex. Hayal Pozanti’s 10 second video are being screened every 100 seconds simultaneously on all of the complex’s 19 screens.

The five key intersections for LinkNYC’s Link kiosks where the works are being shown heavily between 5:00 and 7:00pm daily include 86th St & 3rd Ave; 14th St & 8th Ave; Bowery from Houston to Delancey Sts; Frederick Douglas Blvd (from 123rd to 125th Sts; and 34th St & 6th Ave (Herald Square). The artworks are also being shown randomly across LinkNYC’s network in all five boroughs throughout the day, and a different artist is shown each day of the week (See schedule below).

PublicArtFund.org features Casey Jane Ellison’s work around the clock, along with the rest of the exhibition’s digital videos, images, and exhibition documentation.

Cory Arcangel (Sundays / Times Square)
(b. 1978, Buffalo, NY; lives and works in New York, NY and Stavanger, Norway)

Arcangel Surfware Times Square Video, 2017
HD video
Courtesy of Arcangel Surfware

Cory Arcangel’s diverse artistic approach manifests in music, film, painting, performance, publishing, coding, and video-game manipulations, as well as appropriation and preservation of digital materials. His interest in the language and culture of the internet has led him to establish Arcangel Surfware, a clothing and lifestyle merchandise line and publishing imprint created in collaboration with the global merchandise giant, The Bravado Group, a division of Universal Music Group. This ad spot sends a clear message with its cozy tube socks and branded sweatpants: Arcangel Surfware products consist of everything one needs to “chill” in bed all day and surf the Internet in comfort.

Korakrit Arunanondchai (Thursdays / Times Square)
(b. 1986, Bangkok, Thailand; lives and works in New York, NY and Bangkok)

What separates us from everything that ever existed in this world, 2017
HD video
Courtesy of the artist, C L E A R I N G New York/Brussels and Carlos/Ishikawa London

To see the vertigo of this world and dissolve into lightness, 2017
HD video
Courtesy of the artist, C L E A R I N G New York/Brussels and Carlos/Ishikawa London

Whisper to me the chorus for the new world, 2017
HD video
Courtesy of the artist, C L E A R I N G New York/Brussels and Carlos/Ishikawa London

Combining styles and references from Thai pop culture to art historical canons, Korakrit Arunanondchai creates installations, videos, and performances that question the effects of imperialism, tourism, and the idea of authenticity.

For Times Square, Arunanondchai created three videos, which can be viewed in sequence or independently. The works poetically take us on a journey between Thailand and New York, with vignettes of his grandparents and post-election protests.The videos’ juxtapositions—youth and age, past and present, hope and loss, happiness and pain—poignantly remind us of the complex, tragic, yet beautiful nature of life.

Meriem Bennani (Saturdays / Barclays Center)
(b. 1988, Rabat, Morocco; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)

Your Year by Fardaous Funjab, 2017
Digital video
Featuring Aisha Bint Gladys and Nazia Malik; makeup by Yasmeen Ibrahim; additional 3D modeling by Salim Bayri; graphic design by Ghazaal Vodjani. Courtesy of the artist and SIGNAL

Meriem Bennani’s new artwork for Barclays Center’s “Oculus” screen is an advertisement for an imagined line of hijabs that expands upon her “Fardaous Funjab” videos. That series, about an invented entrepreneur “avant-garde hijab designer,” addresses the issues surrounding the headscarf’s cultural significance and re-evaluates preconceived Western notions about Islamic attire. Her special “Your Year” advertisement proposes an inclusive, multi-ethnic calendar that unifies Islamic holidays with secular ones as well. The artist’s celebration of the hijab and her message of tolerance result in a witty social commentary about how we represent our identities. For this project she worked with hijabista advocates as models and advisers to explore how art and fashion can be an opportunity to overcome cultural biases and bring people together.

Lucas Blalock (Sundays / LinkNYC)
(b. 1978, Asheville, NC; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)

This New Situation, 2017
Series of four digital images
Courtesy of the artist and Ramiken Crucible

Lucas Blalock’s strange photographs bluntly reveal the mechanisms of digital manipulation. He fully exposes these techniques, which are typically concealed to create compelling, perfected bodies in advertisements. By preserving the clumsy quality of his alterations, and in the way that he offers a series of displays of floppy hot dogs, the artist presents us with a kind of slapstick sendup of the perfected advertisement, lampooning the whole medium with pathos and whimsy.

Brian Bress (Tuesdays / Times Square)
(b. 1975, Norfolk, VA; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA)

Consonance and Dissonance in Four Parts for Times Square, 2017
HD video
Courtesy of the Artist and Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles

Brian Bress’ three videos display four elusive figures who are delicately balanced in a state of tension. Their subtle movements make them emerge into the foreground or blend in with their bold graphic backgrounds. Bress’ fabricated landscapes and faceless characters combine humor and art historical references to produce an enigmatic and subtle tableau vivant with powerful metaphorical implications.

Antoine Catala and Gabriel Kahan (Mondays / Link NYC)
(Antoine Catala: b. 1975, Toulouse, France, lives and works in New York, NY)
(Gabriel Kahan: b. 1980, Mexico City, Mexico; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA)

Understand.nyc, 2017
HTML website, mixed media
Programming by Nicholas Woodward; contributions by volunteers
Courtesy of Antoine Catala and 47 Canal, New York; Gabriel Kahan and MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology

Understand.nyc is a collaboration between the artist Antoine Catala and the MIT researcher Gabriel Kahan. For the run of Commerical Break, the duo used the citywide network of LinkNYC kiosks to run an open call for members of the public to partake in a two-day workshop. Reaching beyond their immediate circles, their aim was to find a diverse group of random volunteers to work collaboratively towards identifying a situation common to the participants. Through a series of discussions, the group selected the question ‘What is Love?’, identifying six causal loops: ‘Reality’, ‘Phantom Love’, ‘Impossibly’, ‘Live Love’, ‘The Mirror’, and ‘Uncoupling’. Through collective making these casual loops were then visualized as physical objects, called ‘tiles’, which were scanned and are displayed as 3D objects on http://www.understand.nyc/., where visitors to the site can interact with the tiles. They were also shown on the LinkNYC kiosks network one day after the exhibition closed.

The project and workshop is a methodology—part of Kahan’s on-going research based on finding common ground, in a world where polarity, anxiety, and uncertainty has never been more pervasive—and forms a simple yet powerful tool to better understand our everyday lives.

Kate Cooper (Mondays / Barclays Center)
(b. 1984, Liverpool, UK; lives and works in London, UK)

We Need Sanctuary, 2017
Digital video
Courtesy of the artist

Kate Cooper digitally manipulates images of women to question the aesthetics of advertising and representations of femininity. In We Need Sanctuary, Cooper uses computer generated (CG) figures as the protagonists to consider their potential and presentation as autonomous entities with a logic of their own. While typical CG bodies are always faultless, here the women appear ‘broken’—frustrating the typical position they occupy as perfect versions of the female form. The result is a work that is at odds with what it is made for, with the characters refusing their prescribed purpose.

Sue de Beer (Saturdays / Times Square)
(b.1973, Tarrytown NY; lives and works in New York)

If They Come in the Morning 1, 2017
HD video
Featuring Arianna Gil and Purp Perez Brujas. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery

If They Come in the Morning 2, 2017
HD video
Featuring Arianna Gil and Purp Perez Brujas. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery

If They Come in the Morning 3, 2017
HD video
Featuring Arianna Gil and Purp Perez Brujas. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery

Sue de Beer’s films explore social issues in contemporary culture with a unique visual style of colored light, prismatic doubling, and close cropping that create an enticing cinematographic charm. Her contributions to this exhibition feature two young urban skateboarders from the Bronx “Brujas” feminist skate crew who view their interventions into the city and urban street culture as a deeply political act. Their strong presence on an advertising screen in the center of the city, images of their political heroes, and de Beer’s final appeal “Don’t Mourn, Organize,” all send a powerful message about the radical nature of their actions.

Casey Jane Ellison (Daily / PublicArtFund.org/CommercialBreak)
(b. 1988, Los Angeles, CA; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA)

Commercial Break with Casey Jane Ellison, 2017
Video with sound
Courtesy of the artist

Casey Jane Ellison is a stand-up comedian, artist, and writer. Working with performance and video, her works often humorously address television and celebrity culture, feminism, identity politics, and the history of art. In line with the ubiquity of online advertising and messaging, Public Art Fund invited Ellison to develop a series of pop-up “ads” for the exhibition’s home page. Ellison created an episode – complete with breaks where the exhibition artworks run as commercials – where she muses on the perils of bread and fascism.

Awol Erizku (Thursdays / LinkNYC)
(b. 1988, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; lives and works in New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA)

Bitches Brew, 2017
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist and Night Gallery, Los Angeles

untitled (Study of hand holding a rose), 2017
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist and Night Gallery, Los Angeles

Prelude to Serendipity In collaboration with Sarah Lineberger, 2017
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist and Night Gallery, Los Angeles

Tinashe, 2017
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist and Night Gallery, Los Angeles

Awol Erizku’s photographs focus on the ways that people of color represent themselves as well as how they are portrayed in the art world, advertising, and in the media. The artist’s tableaux and portraits reference historical imagery, mine high fashion, are in close dialogue with street culture, and evoke the old masters. His series of artworks for Commercial Break merge these diverse references and styles, as well as recognizable tropes with the enticing imagery of contemporary floral still-lifes to produce striking photographs that compel us to scrutinize the power of pictures that proliferate in the world today.

Cécile B. Evans (Tuesdays / Barclays Center)
(Belgian-American artist, b. 1983, Cleveland, OH; lives and works in London, UK)

A memory can live, 2017
Video, color, no sound
3D modeling by Hossein Diba; additional renders by Andres Parody and Tom Kemp; animation and compositing by Otavio Lima and Tom Kemp. Original character animation from What the Heart Wants, 2016 co-commissioned by the 9th Berlin Biennale, De Hallen Frans Hals Museum, Kunsthalle Winterthur, and Kunsthalle Aarhus.
Courtesy of the artist and Emanuel Layr Galerie, Vienna.

A memory can live is the origin story of What the Heart Wants, Cécile B. Evans’ 2016 video installation commissioned by the 9th Berlin Biennale. What the Heart Wants explores what it could mean to be human in the future, and what constitutes ‘a person’. HYPER, the narrator of What the Heart Wants, presents herself as a new system, introducing viewers to a future time called “after k”, and proposes a solution to the collapse of the WWW. In A memory can live, HYPER presents a public service announcement for a clean slate: a blank, editable document page where users can collect their thoughts, start new conversations free of convoluted interfaces and timelines. HYPER’s product isn’t for you, it is you—start building her world at http://amemorycan.live/ now.

Ed Fornieles (Tuesdays / LinkNYC)
(b. 1983, Petersfield, UK; lives and works in Montreal, Canada)

Are you a Pepe, 2017
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist

Meme wars daddy 1, 2017
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist

Meme wars daddy 2, 2017
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist

Are you a Wojak, 2017
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist

Babble, 2017
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist

Gabble, 2017
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist

Rabble, 2017
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist

Yabble, 2017
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist

From installations to sitcoms on Facebook, Ed Fornieles intertwines online and offline spaces, using avatars, data feeds, and news trends to expand upon our post-digital reality. For LinkNYC, Fornieles has created two sets of works that stand to spark conversations which confront political ‘bubbles’.

The first series of images, which run for the first half of the exhibition, explores the cooption of memes as symbols for political ideologies and the camps they form. The two memes used by Fornieles are the controversial Pepe the Frog, and ‘Feels Guy,’ Wojak. While innocently created in 2008, by early 2016 Pepe’s image had been appropriated by the alt-right, becoming synonymous with the movement. Wojak – used to represent feelings such as melancholy and loneliness – started appearing alongside Pepe as his victim of various crimes.

The second set of images, Babble, Gabble, Rabble, Yabble, advertizes a ‘Political Conversations Series’, which the artist plans to activate after the exhibition to encourage further dialogue on political divisions. Each work points to a position on the political spectrum, from radically left to right.

Fornieles’ works for this exhibition speak to a current moment with historic references, where ideologies are represented through codes, symbols, individuals and language. However, today, the internet provides the optimum platform for their circulation and assimilation.

GCC (Thursdays / Barclays Center)
Nanu Al-Hamad (b. 1987, Kuwait City, Kuwait; lives in New York, NY), Khalid Al Gharaballi (b. 1981, Kuwait City, Kuwait; lives in Kuwait City), Abdullah Al-Mutairi (b. 1990, Kuwait City, Kuwait; lives in New York, NY), Fatima Al Qadiri (b. 1981, Dakar, Senegal; lives in New York, NY, Monira Al Qadiri (b. 1983, Dakar, Senegal; lives in Beirut, Lebanon), Aziz Al Qatami (b. 1979, Kuwait City, Kuwait; lives in Kuwait City, Kuwait), Barrak Alzaid (b. 1985, Kuwait City, Kuwait; lives in Dubai, United Arab Emirates), Amal Khalaf (b. 1982, Singapore; lives in London, UK)

My Vision, 2017
Digital video
Courtesy of the artists

Founded in the VIP lounge of Art Dubai in 2013, the collective GCC aims to investigate the contemporary culture of the Persian Gulf region. Circulating on Barclays Center’s “Oculus”, digital images of the oil paintings of the members of GCC are positioned in the role of “Baba”, or the Father, a title often used by political leaders within the Middle East. Their painted eyes replicate variations of the gaze found in traditional portraits of heads of state, from the “visionary” leader to the punitive stares of a dictator. Big Baba’s eyes are always watching.

David Horvitz (Wednesdays / LinkNYC)
(b. 1981, Los Angeles, CA; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA)

For Kiyoko, From Amache, 2017
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist and Chert Lüdde, Berlin

David Horvitz works across media, often poetically using systems of circulation to analyze patterns of movement. He collects and then distributes images and objects through various means, from the internet to libraries.

Across LinkNYC kiosks, Horvitz is displaying one simple image of a night sky, with a short text that directly addresses the viewer—a reference to advertising slogans. However, the words do not form a benign statement but poignantly reference his grandmother, who was incarcerated in a Japanese Internment Camp in the United States. The facilities were in operation for four years following Pearl Harbor and detained between 110,000-120,000 Japanese Americans. The camps followed numerous exclusion acts which effectively banned all immigration from various Asian countries, including Japan and China. The work is a personal yet universal, timely and elegiac reminder to take heed of the past, especially when crafting the future.

Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley (Mondays / Times Square)
(Mary Reid Kelley: b. 1979, Greenville, SC; lives and works in Olivebridge, NY)
(Patrick Kelley: b. 1969, Bloomington, MN; lives and works in Olivebridge, NY)

Crete Meat, 2016
HD video, no sound, edited from “Swinburne’s Pasiphae” (2014)
Courtesy of the artists, Pilar Corrias Gallery, and Fredericks & Freiser

Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley create black and white videos filled with historical references that explore the condition of women throughout history by combining wordplay-rich poetry, fictional characters, and utopian environments. Their new video titled Crete Meat, adapted from their 2014 work Swinburne’s Pasiphae, fuses classical antiquity with pop culture. Shown within the context of Times Square, this video becomes a satire of advertising, highlighting the peculiarities of desire.

Heather Phillipson (Wednesdays / Times Square)
(b. 1978, London, UK; lives and works in London, UK)

WHAT’S THE DAMAGE, 2017
HD video
Courtesy of the artist

Heather Phillipson’s videos and sculptural installations are a surge of images, noises, colors and words that, together, form complex poetic digressions on our contemporary moment. WHAT’S THE DAMAGE transmits the energy and emotion of political protest. The work smashes together representations of destruction— flayed animals, flying money, fracked earth, bleeding skies, drones, warfare, goosebumps, chicken bones, spinning kidneys— to reflect back a chaotic, urgent moment onto Times Square.

Agnieszka Polska (Sundays / Barclays Center)
(b. 1985, Lublin, Poland; lives and works in Berlin, Germany)

The Crying Sun, 2017
Digital video
Courtesy of the artist and Zak | Branicka Gallery, Berlin

Agnieszka Polska videos often start with found material, from archival photographs to illustrations, which she manipulates through animation and collage. Her subject matters are based on past events and people, to demonstrate how history can be fictionalized, erased, or rewritten.

The Crying Sun is an animated film inspired by the children’s poem What the Sun Has Seen, by Maria Konopnicka, an influential Polish poet of the positivism period, a translator, journalist and progressive activist for women’s rights and Polish independence. Common themes within the poet’s work included the poverty of the peasantry and their oppression; this poem tells, in a childlike manner, of the countryside’s daily life, rituals, and activities, as viewed by the Sun above. In Polska’s video, the Sun, while bright and childlike, starts to cry, becoming a powerful metaphor for the pain of being a passive viewer without having the agency to act.

Hayal Pozanti (Daily / Westfield World Trade Center)
(b. 1983, Istanbul, Turkey; lives and works in Queens, NY)

RELENTLESS TENDERNESS, 2017
19 single channel video animations
Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman Gallery

As a part of her practice, Pozanti has devised her own enigmatic alphabet of abstract forms that are expressed in multicolored paintings and digital images. Her variations on these 31 signs highlight the role of technology and language in culture and how information is conveyed and received in our current data-driven digital age. Their combinations mark the differences between human beings and artificial intelligence to emphasize the value of emotions and the commonalities we share as a species. RELENTLESS TENDERNESS, which was commissioned by Public Art Fund for Westfield World Trade Center’s 19 digital screens, appears in the advertising cycle as a striking contrast between familiar and unknown languages. Her alphabet of shapes floats in the background, while its English translation spells out the words “RELENTLESS TENDERNESS,” which scroll across the screen. This distinctively human expression differentiates us from artificial intelligence to emphasize the value of emotions and the commonalities we share as a species. This echoes the artist’s plea for tolerance, understanding, and empathy in the world today.

Tabor Robak (Fridays / Barclays Center)
(b. 1986, Portland, OR; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)

Liquid Demo, 2016
Digital Video
Courtesy of the artist

Tabor Robak’s computer-generated images and videos merge 3-D animation, gaming, and the language of marketing to create an instructive tension between reality and simulation. For Barclays Center’s “Oculus,” Robak used an innovative method to create his new colorful artwork. The artist animated algorithmic movement patterns from video games and transformed them into bright swirls of color that fill the screen and turn the impressive 360-degree screen into a dynamic pipeline of flowing liquid color to surround the audience below.

Jacolby Satterwhite (Wednesdays / Barclays Center)
(b. 1986, Columbia, SC; lives and works in New York, NY)

The Safe Space, 2017
Video animation
Courtesy of the artist and Moran Bondaroff Gallery

Jacolby Satterwhite’s videos of environments inspired by science-fiction use performance and 3-D animation to explore memory and personal history. His new work for Barclays Center showcases a 360-degree virtual reality video. Its futuristic scene features an extraterrestrial landscape of bright whirling machines and dancing figures to entrance viewers with their immersive allure.

Martine Syms (Fridays / Times Square)
(b. 1988, Los Angeles, CA; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA)

Lesson LXXV, 2017
Digital video
Courtesy of the artist and Bridget Donahue Gallery

Deeply influenced by film and television, Martine Syms’ multimedia work examines representations of blackness and its relationship to American situational comedy, language, cinema, and feminist movements. Her new video, Lesson LXXV, is a continuation of her ongoing series that began with the artist creating commercials on the ‘lessons’ outlined in Kevin Young’s book of prose, The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness. While previous Lessons have featured personal and found video, for Times Square Syms created a poignant yet disquieting self-portrait with charged overtones.

Britta Thie (Fridays / LinkNYC)
(b. 1987, Minden, Germany; lives and works in Berlin, Germany)

The Superhost, Teaser, 2017
Digital video
Courtesy of the artist

The Superhost, Poster, 2017
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist

Anxiety hits, 2013
Digital image,
Photo by Kerstin Zu Pan; styling by Julia Burlingham. Courtesy of the artist

Britta Thie’s work examines the human condition, through soap operas, advertising, and the complex fluctuating relationship between the self and digital representation. The artist’s six-part web series, Translantics, dramatized the characteristics of millennials, through online personas, and the fluidity of identity and nationality.

For the LinkNYC kiosks, Thie is running a commercial for her forthcoming follow-up series The Superhost. Set in a fictional Airbnb apartment, the satirical drama centers around post-digital self-commodification, achieved through online rating systems. The sitcom was performed in front of a live audience in June 2016, and the live-recordings and rehearsals form the final web series, with added animation and a laugh track that corresponds to rating-stars. The show launches in March 2017 on ARTE.TV as a web series. For more information please visit the-superhost.com

Hannah Whitaker (Saturdays / LinkNYC)
(b. 1980, Washington, D.C.; lives and works in New York, NY)

Step 1, 2017
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist and M+B Gallery

Step 2, 2017
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist and M+B Gallery

Step 3, 2017
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist and M+B Gallery

Step 4, 2017
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist and M+B Gallery

Hannah Whitaker begins to create her photographs with a technique that may not involve digital pixels, but which evokes the first computers’ “punched card” that enabled data processing. She creates a series of screens that (section by section) expose her subjects onto the film. Through this meticulous, repetitive process, she has created a group of images for Commercial Break with moving bodies framed in colorful geometric forms. In this way, she uses the techniques of digital information processing and rudimentary animation to create striking photographs that evoke historic digital technology. These refer to the innovative pioneers of graphic design and advertising in an iterative way that adds a flash of whimsy and color to our urban dynamism.