Sean Landers: Woke or Willing

The pale yellow with blue lines of a legal notepad are printed onto twelve canvases before it is stretched over bars and ready for Sean Landers to paint on. Except that the printed canvas is of archival quality it’s much like a jumbo size of the real thing—an existing surface for Landers to apply his thoughts. This easily recognizable background references some paintings and work on paper from earlier in his career, but does little else for this selection of work. The integrity of this work is in the painted text and cartoony imagery that Landers’s applies as if with a permanent marker. In black strokes the artist’s flushes out with what he grapples, his role in and concern for the present social and political climate. Landers literally presents his inner dialogue to the viewers, blurring his personal stance with public concern in a public manner. What comes across a sincere awareness of his white male privilege and consciousness of his success as a middle-aged artist captivates the viewers’ attention and keeps it so that one reads every word on each of the twelve paintings. The message is what people want to hear, and it’s genuine. As a viewer I was nodding, thinking this dude is woke. It was disappointing to learn that the truths Landers painted in these twelve paintings were reiterated in ten other paintings also from 2017. These were presented at the ADAA Art Show in conjunction with this gallery exhibition, as if to differentiate the legal notepad paintings as lesser. In this other series the canvas is covered in paint (i.e. no printed canvas) and more physical labor was involved. The text appears to be carved in the bark of birch or aspen trees, another throw back to earlier works. This referencing to earlier artworks and reiterating of truth makes me think Landers is aware and willing to play into a saleable market instead of argue a point.

Review: Beryl Korot: A Coded Language

                    Beryl Korot uses computer language as material in her art practice, combines elements of weaving, painting, video projection and photography to shape a space that confused me whether I am in the real world or the machine world.

                    Because of the development of computer networks, "data" has become a distinctive feature of this era. Data can be used as an object of artistic creation and can be visualized in a "visual" way. 

                    In Korot's works, she uses computer data as the primary material and visual element to materialize the data in the real world poetically. She uses the coding language from the machine with weaving, a very traditional handicraft technique. The information in machine data and weaving is encrypted by line. The pattern on the loom is placed line by line, and machine data is also displayed line by line. By grafting machine data into the weaving linen, thus showing a sense of extreme contradictions between humane and rational. From the relatively cold tone she used on the linen, we can clearly sense the rational metaphor of the machine. 

                  Traditionally, we use brushes, paints, brains, eyes, and hands to organize information, present a world of visual images on paper or canvases; in the mechanical era, we can use machines, films. In the digital era, we began to use a new device—computers—to enter mathematic languages into computing systems and output a brand new image world through the screen. 

                  Looking at her work is easy to think about whether she is trying to explore or praise the beauty of machine data because she presents the data in such a delicate way. But from one of her work named Babel, we can learn exactly her attitude towards machine language is critical. On the one hand, I think she regards machine code as a language, on the other hand, she thinks that this language, like other languages, has lost information in translation or conversion. This language also has the privilege of dividing human civilization into upper and lower levels, since the acceptance of this language also depends on the class attribute in the real society.


Revised:
Beryl Korot uses computer language as material in her art practice, combining elements of weaving, painting, video projection and photography to shape a space that confuses the real world and the machine world.
Due to the development of computer networks, "data" has become a distinctive feature of the present era. Data can be used as an object in artistic creation and can be visualized.
In Korot's works, the artist materializes the data in the real world poetically. Compared to just watching one of the works, the exhibition let us feel the fictional abstract space created by her works. She combines the coding language of the computer with weaving, a very traditional handicraft technique. Thus she invented the first computer that uses Jacquard loom. The information in the computer data and weaving is encrypted line by line. The pattern on the loom is placed line by line, and machine data is displayed line by line. Grafting the machine data into the weaving linen thus shows a sense of the extreme contradiction of the perceptual and the rational. From the relatively cool color threads she uses on the linen, we can sense the rational aspect referring to lifeless machines.
Traditionally, artist use brushes, paints, brains, eyes, and hands to organize information and present a world of images on paper or canvases. In the mechanical era, the artist can use cameras, films. In the digital era, we began to use a new device—computers—to enter mathematical languages into computing systems and output brand new image world through the screen. 

Looking at the Korot's work, it is tempting to consider whether she is trying to explore or praise the beauty of data because she presents it in such a delicate way. However, from another of her works, named "Babel," we learn what her attitude towards to machine language is. On the one hand, I think she regards machine code as a language, and on the other, that she thinks that this language, like other languages, loses information in translation or conversion.