“The hybrid or the meeting of two media, is a moment of truth and revelation from which new form is born.”
– McLuhan
Picture Theory is pleased to present an exhibition by Elias Wessel, It’s Complicated, featuring 11 photographic installations and a sound installation.
It’s Complicated is an inspection of media algorithms and our relationships with the seemingly irresistible nature of social media. Wessel documents the real-life scrolling of social media users by utilizing a long-exposure that culminates in abstract compositions. These photographs serve as reflections and metaphors to the indistinct boundaries between man and machine–inviting viewers to rethink digital media and consider the relativistic, incomplete, and fragmented worldview we consume daily. Wessel is concerned with the psychophysiological experience of a visual reality. Artificial Intelligence becomes a focal point with the visual-to-text recognition “poems” (Is Possibly Art; Textfetzen), accompanying each photograph. The artist seeks to visualize questions such as “How does digital space react to analog space?” or “How can we find clear meaning in the mass of information noise, without a discernible, trusted source?”
Systems at Play is a sound installation in collaboration with musician Natalia Kiës, where sounds become a reflective dimension of immersing oneself in a web of digital distraction; oscillating between sound, between platforms, and between algorithms. It offers a chance to see, hear and enjoy the absurdity of the information we consume, and the disorienting,changing structure of language and communication.
– Evyn Bileri Banawoye
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Elias Wessel is an artist from Germany, based in New York City since 2008. His artworks have been recognized in exhibitions around the world, with recent solo shows at 1014 New York, Palais Beauharnais Paris, Art Collection of the Willy-Brandt-Haus Berlin, and group shows at, among others, Museum of Contemprary Art Taipei, NRW Forum Düsseldorf, and Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern (mpk). His works are included in public and private collections such as the Spallart Art Collection, Salzburg; AXA Art Collection, Cologne; and the German Parliament’s Art Collection (Kunstsammlung des Deutschen Bundestages), Berlin. Recent publications include Textfetzen (Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2022) and Aesthetics of Conflict (Verlag Kettler, 2023).