Corey’s work consists of highly sophisticated hybrid paintings utilizing the tools of past and present to extend the dialogue of painting. In so doing she questions our expectations of what is made using a machine and what it means to be painting with a computer today. She began with a traditional painting approach and in 1995 she produced her first computer sketches. Corey composes her images by pushing the limits of what computer software is intended to do. By using the glitches and errors in the programs she is aiming for the results of a digital composition. The passages of her digital abstractions read at first glance as drips, brushstrokes, and palette knife scrapings. The addition of traditional materials further blurs the line between new and old techniques. The artist has said she is engaged in “a dialogue with the history of painting” by means of technology. Corey’s long journey tests the ability of a computer as a tool in the generation of imagery that delivers a visual experience directly comparable to that created in traditional media.

“My current body of work is inspired by the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film is infused with ideas of what a computer is capable of, both positive and negative. The monolith in the film was based on a computer chip from the era and the trip to Jupiter was based on among other things, abstract painting. I believe my work is a natural outgrowth from the technologies and ideas begun in the 60s, the decade I was born, “ Corey says. Corey is pushing the materials of our time forward conceptually through the use of digital and traditional materials. The exhibition Progress encompasses ideas referred to in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Dave Bowman’s journey and evolution in the Clarke/Kubrick story 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the development of humankind, both morally and technologically.

This is Claire Corey’s first solo exhibition at Venetia Kapernekas Gallery. Her recent exhibition was Renderings at Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer in Düsseldorf, Germany in 2006. She has had solo exhibition at the Plains Art Museum in North Dakota, and participated in group shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Washington D.C., the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City and the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Connecticut. Corey has also participated in international exhibitions in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, London, England, Milan, Italy and Düsseldorf, Germany. Claire Corey is a recipient of awards from the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Space Program, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Aldrich Museum Trustee’s Award for an Emerging Artist, and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Computer Arts. She lives and works in New York.