Artie VIERKANT: This show sets out to challenge the distinctions between object and document, the virtual and material, along with our existing ideas on authorship and propriety.
- Artie VIERKANT, “Image Object Sunday 31 December 2017 11:59AM.”, UV Print On Aluminum Composite Panel
- Artie VIERKANT, “Image Object Sunday 31 December 2017 11:59AM.”, UV Print On Aluminum Composite Panel
- Artie VIERKANT, “Rooms Greet People By Name.”, Installation View
- Artie VIERKANT, “Rooms Greet People By Name.”, Installation View
FROM THE SHOWS PRESS RELEASE:
His work spans a variety of media: co-existing photographic or sculptural techniques with unconventional
materials ranging from circulating JPEGs to the negotiated limits of patents and trademarks.
Central to this pursuit is the artist’s assertion that an object’s physical manifestation is no more or less consequential than its
representations. For Vierkant, the representation itself can exist “without reference to the ‘original’, so that we can no longer identify
anything as an “original copy”. This is most evident in his series, Image Objects, ongoing since 2011. These works are made as prints
using contemporary commercial printing technologies commonly applied for advertising and luxury signage. Subsequently the works
are documented in photographic images which are harshly and abstractly retouched, often to the point that the original object is more
or less unrecognizable and the space of the installation itself appears blended with the object. The documentation of the art becomes
a work in its own right, with object and image equally part of the overall work, calling into question the ability of the one to supersede
the other, and collapsing notions of value.
“[today] it is assumed that the work of art lies equally in the version of the object one would encounter at a gallery or museum,
the images and other representations disseminated through the Internet and print publications, bootleg images of the object or its
representations, and variations on any of these as edited and recontextualized by any other author». The Image Object series is
intended to embrace this condition, and utilize the venue of dissemination as a platform for work.” says Vierkant.
For his exhibition at the gallery, Vierkant will present a new group of largely monochromatic works that expand on the artist’s Image
Objects series. One sequence of works, titled Image Objects Sunday 31 December 2017 2:42PM – 7:01PM, carries an entire wall
with a series of dark blue forms which proceed in sequence from each other, all coming from the same source file and constituting exact
Wednesday - Sunday
10am - 6pm
130 Orchard Street
New York, NY 10002
View of the exhibition of Artie Vierkant at Perrotin New York (March 3 – April 8, 2018) Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli / Courtesy Perrotin
rotations of each of their component layers. These works are the first Vierkant has made since 2013 that share the rectangular motif
and profile employed in some of his earliest work. Unlike previous works that explored incorporating ranges of colors, including at one
time a rainbow gradient aesthetic, each of these ignore a huge percentage of the color spectrum made possible by commercial
printing.
Alongside his photographs, Vierkant will exhibit new large mirror pieces that appear to have forms of pure light emanating from their
surface. These sculptures employ the aesthetics and material properties of a ‘smart mirror’, a common technological trope in science
fiction, and speculative consumer product. However instead of displaying time, infographics, or other familiar information, Vierkant
has created forms on the surface of the mirror that are fixed and not reactive, mapped gestures transformed into a vector graphics.
A third and independent work is the Image Object app. Available for free, the viewer may load the app onto their smartphone whilst
visiting the show, and experience an augmented reality of shapes and layers unfolding around them in real time. As the phone’s
camera locates and calibrates the space of the viewer, the aesthetic experience is akin to walking around within the layered installation
views Vierkant disseminates, with layers of abstraction appearing over the works and suspended in space throughout the room













