COMPUTER VIRUS 1.0 AND THE RETURN OF LAZARUS
by L. Brandon Krall
November 22, 2017
A retrospective view of Joseph NechvatalÕs
sensual works is at Jean-Luc RichardÕs gallery
at 121 Orchard Street, located just above Kenmare in the LES. These soft richly
textured surfaces and images are not handmade but conceived visually in digital
territory. Three works from 2017 are from the Return of Lazarus series; titles follow the series name, they are prOlOngatiOn, expeditiOn, and sublimatiOn. The
three chosen to be realized by computer-robotic machines onto velour were from
among thirty or more digital maquettes, composed
while on a sojourn to a Thailand island. They are suffused with deep oranges,
shades of umber and gold, brilliant reds and influenced in part by the milieu
of a dominantly Buddhist culture.
Nechvatal creates an Òunclarity
by designÓ in his work so that the viewer may divine something of the future or
the past in his fields of imagery; engaging their imagination to receive the
work. While these paintings were digitally composed from code and its manipulation,
plaid like swathes, a deco frieze and fragments of an erotic poem run through
them. As if a positive apocalypse were possible; the beginning of a new world.
This micro retrospective ranges from the late 80s, to
the early 90s and into the present, the general theme is Òrecovery.Ó An overall
effect of the nine works on display shows the thread of code and programming to
be at the service of the human condition. The earliest works in the show
include, Hyper-Intersubjectivity
and Networked Animus, part of the
ÒInformed ManÓ series done between 1986-1989, one can discern the figure of
Lazarus, with his bright shadow amid the decaying, corroded, scrambled and
scratched imagery.
A post-conceptualist, Nechvatal
proceeded on the assertion that painting was dead and he chose to bring it back
to life with computers. Religion was not the point, but the miracle of
recovering from injury and loss, and acknowledging the ravages of HIV and AIDS
inform his work of the period. This was the time when the HIV virus and AIDS
epidemic were full blown. Some Federal programs were established to study and
combat the crisis, and ACT UP was in its
most critically active phase.
Using chance operations in a Cagean
approach; Nechvatal first used the computer virus
while an Artist in Residence at the Louis Pasteur Institute where he co-wrote a
computer program to generate imagery, and working with a scientist at the
Institute created the first viral attacks. In the viral attack series, known by
the French term he invented as, viral attaque, Nechvatal introduced
a precise line, a stripe with a nod to NewmanÕs zip, to create a border, a
delimitation in the composition. The viral element that was launched into the
code looks at times like colorful stitching or
fragments of a knit. There is a sense in one piece of a possible aerial view,
and a map like feeling in another suggests data points. Then one can see that
the virus crosses all borders without compunction. The brightly colored, dense yet light textures of these works are
generated through digital code mixed with a number of sources including erotic
poetry and the artistÕs early fractal program.
These compositions are fundamentally mathematical
objects that were brought to life as imagery. Living in the late 80s away from
New York city, in the Jura area of France, and decades before moving to Paris, Nechvatal was involved with the French cultural project. It
began with reading Rimbaud, MallarmŽ and the French
Symbolist poets growing up in Chicago, and following his move to New York
continued with French philosophy and literature, especially Deleuze
and Guattari.
Hyper-Intersubjectivity (1988)
24x18Ó canvas
Nechvatal is a poet and sound artist whose
diverse works explore multimedia with a sensualist intent. His poetry book, Destroyer of NaivetŽs,
published in 2015, was made into a recording (that can be found online) by
CAVE BACCHUS: Black Sifichi,
Rhys Chatham and Joseph Nechvatal.
NechvatalÕs oeuvre is exceptional in that it
engages digital media, a mental and immersive state, as a visual artist
evolving from dense handmade drawings to robotically realized imagery painted
on canvas or velour, in the domain of bytes. Addressing the super abundance of
media at its basic level, since the beginning of digital media, this work
merges the mental, emotional, intellectual and physical in generating paintings
where thoughts, projected through robotic systems, enter the light as real
things.
Retrun
of Lazarus : prOlOngatiOn (2017) 4x5Õ velour
At his blog Hyper-Noise Aesthetics
Nechvatal writes this Òartist note/poem on my Return of
Lazarus paintings (2017)Ó
***_
recovery
*
painting as scab
scarabs in the mist
tragic timelessness
*
discontinuity embedded in continuity
loss as movement that spiritualizes life
the materialization of the dematerialized
*
an enteric approach
pulling old images inside out
like an old glove
*
they perform an expressive operation on what was done
before
exposing their velour lining
*
they are a ride on the horns of time
always a shimmering dilemma
to be or not to be
*
the art world is a mishmash of unfinished business
a continuous grinding
formed by unseen and unadmitted past engagements
*
back from the dead
quite ÔnaturallyÕ the noise aesthetic of
my Informed ManÕs repressed excess did not receive the social backing of the
1980s culture_Return of Lazarus explores
re-engagements with that past_
*_
at stake is the visceral sensation of
penetrating plenty of nothing_we donÕt understand what is happening now_because we canÕt face what was happening
then_
*_
the first wave of_fecund nothingness_
***