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ARTCAT



James Paterson, Harvest

bitforms gallery
529 West 20th Street, 2nd Floor, 212-366-6939
Chelsea
March 12 - April 25, 2009
Reception: Thursday, March 12, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
Web Site


A second solo exhibition with James Paterson featuring painting, drawing and software works that are grown from a decade-long diaristic process. In his work, accumulated libraries of imagery rooted in daily experience revolve around the subjects of digestion, sex, self-critique and skateboarding. Using ink and programming as primary tools, James Paterson continually cycles through meditations on the everyday.

The Rotten Fruit Tardis, launched online and presented for the first time in a gallery setting, is an animated vehicle that transports viewers between a myriad of dimensions. The “Nun Tit Oracle” and “New Zealand Vine Collection” are among many nested worlds synthesized in software by Paterson and displayed as a wall-projection. When explored using The Rotten Fruit Tardis interface, these environments reveal narrative and creatures sketched by hand, all extruded from Paterson’s drawing archive.

“My journey into programming stemmed from a desire to give viewers the opportunity to pilot my work, and feel like they are physically connected with it in a way that they would not be by just looking at a drawing or watching a video,” says Paterson. “The desire to transport people into my working instead of just having them observe it from the outside lead me to try and piggy-back the conventions of game design as a way to achieve this visceral immersion.”

A screen-based work, 5000 Drawings also plays with the relativity of an observer. Guided inside an expanding and contracting realm of fluid greyscale contours, one’s gaze can float through multiple viewpoints. Using Paterson’s first 5000 drawings since the year 2000 as content, this piece becomes a journey through a virtual sketchbook. Bubble letters, calendars, skulls, cars, mutated hands, and flowers drift in a space where visual pathways are left open for each viewer to navigate. The omni-directional interface of this work allows one to scroll through a dense soup of pictures that appear to be cutout and freed from the paper on which they were originally drawn.

In Paterson’s work the processes of drawing and programming overlap, feeding into each other. This is perhaps most visible in the graphite wall drawings of the exhibition. Scaled using a projector and drawn by hand on site, these pieces were created using The Objectivity Engine a piece of software authored by Paterson that assists him, as a smash-up tool, in building new visual compositions out of collected imagery. Rooted in the traditions of collage by helping to rearrange a vast digital library of paintings, drawings and animation created over the years, The Objectivity Engine algorithm is rewritten by Paterson every time it is used for a new project. The ink drawings on paper in Harvest were also created using a similar process.

Collaboration is a strong feature of Paterson’s work. Sound and music in the exhibition is the result of working with Mark Hardy and Chris Grabowski of K-rAd, an electronic group based in Chicago. Also the twelve paintings in Harvest were created in partnership with artist Jeremy Felker, who used the drawings of Paterson as a point of departure. Continuing the cycle of accumulation and reassembly, these reappear in animated form inside The Rotten Fruit Tardis software.

Biography – James Paterson James Paterson (b.1980, England) is an artist, animator and programmer based in Montreal. The subject of a solo exhibition in 2008 at the Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Paterson recently has been collaborating on performances with choreographer Dana Gringas and the Holy Body Tattoo Dance Company. Seen last year at the Monument-National/Studio Hydro-Quebec, past exhibitions of Paterson’s work also include the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei; Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Seoul Museum of Art, Korea; The Block Museum, Northwestern University; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; GGG Gallery, Tokyo; Kunsthalle Wien, Austria; Centro de Cultura Contemporanea de Barcelona; London Design Museum; Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam, Decordova Museum; Seoul International Art Biennale; Kunstlerhaus Wien; Muvim in Valencia, Spain; and bitforms gallery, Seoul; Ars Electronica, Linz; HERE, New York; Alfred University and the Flash Film Festival.

Biography – K-rAd Based in Chicago, K-rAd is a musical act that includes Chris Grabowski and Mark Hardy. Established in 1996 as an experimental collective, first making music with machines expelled from mid-90s office-land, K-rAd quickly built up the reputation of a completely contained D.I.Y. electronic music unit, pressing their own CD-Rs and playing nightclubs, rock clubs, and underground parties. With more than 40 releases since, K-rAd’s recent projects include sound and music for films, musicals, hip-hoperas, pizza-making, commercials, driving and chil-lates exercises. www.padK-rAd.com.

Biography – Jeremy Felker Visual artist Jeremy Felker (b. 1979. London Ontario, Canada) creates drawings and paintings that explore sustainability, morality, family, sexuality, nutrition and weapons. Felker is presently based in Montreal.

Special Thanks James Paterson appreciates the generous support of Jen Ham, Amit Pitaru, Branden Hall from Automata Studios, James Braithwaite, Nick Petty, Robbie Cameron, Dana Gingras, Kim Waldron, and Mike Gilles from Furni, without whom this exhibit would not have been possible.

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