Analog to Digital

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LACDA Presents Analog to Digital: Big Names and Big Ideas

by Dale Youngman

The LA Center for Digital Art presents a major exhibit sure to capture the attention of emerging and professional photographers, as well as those interested in all forms of digital art and photography.

“Analog to Digital” explores the subtle differences and increasing similarities between work done using traditional analog procedures, and work created in the newer, expansive digital realm. The curator Rex Bruce has this to say, “The thoughtful examination of connections as opposed to differences of these forms as a focus within our exhibition illuminates important currents in contemporary artistic practice.”

The exciting exhibit is certainly thought –provoking, pushing the envelope of the newest technologies, computer programs, and the increasingly sophisticated skill combinations of the artists themselves. Often utilizing multiple processes and materials, the wide range of work shown is a testament to how art created in the digital environment can be complex, brilliant and completely unique in it’s refreshing newness.

Starting in the darkroom, photographer Joel-Peter Witkin mistreats his negatives, distressing them and reposing classic images to create bizzare tableaux pieces that are disturbing yet strangely mesmerizing. Mark Mothersbaugh’s series of “Beautiful Mutants” begins with 19th century daguerreotype portraits, that are then scanned and manipulated to become symmetrical versions of a single image, distorting and re-shaping faces into horrific, disfigured “mutants.”

You may be surprised to learn that John Baldasarri used computer assistance to create the mechanicals used in his most recent lithograph prints, which combine photography with different elements to create “knock-outs” in his work. Rex Bruce explains, “In past collaborations with master printmaker Francesco Siqueiros, the artist gave specifications in a series of documents, whereby the printmaker assembled the various elements and executed the knockouts and other required materials to fabricate the plates used in the final printing. The diptych on display for this exhibit is an excellent example of the newer process, which in the end used 17 separate color plates for its production.”

Utilizing multiple procedures, mixed media artist Patti Heid begins her masterpieces with digitally-created computer imagery, printed large–scale on an archival ink-jet printer. She adds acrylic airbrush painting and embellishments of hand-sewing and beading with sequins, gold thread, and semi-precious stones to create contemporary mural-size pieces with an antique tapestry feeling.

Dennis Hopper’s piece, entitled “Fractured Girl (Billboard Factory)” employs traditional photography as a starting point, adding multiple images re-created, layered, and re-composed in a “fractured” image that harkens to the dreams of many a young starlet. Annaliese Veraldiev also uses multiple images of a face – her own- which are “re-dubbed, re-photographed, and reproduced” through various means, and then re-assembled, with the degenerative results becoming a focal point in the final work, which is printed large scale at high-resolution, thus amplifying the imperfections, and finally, mounting it all to a glass-like sheet of plexi.

Well-known artist Gronk takes us through multiple disciplines, from analog photography, painting, 3-D animation and various digital technologies to create his piece “Brain Flame”, a video incorporating all of his talents. Rex Bruce observes, “It is evident that the artist was attracted to the digital realm and through this work successfully crossed into it while retaining all of his highly masterful style.”

Other artists included in this fascinating and enlightening exhibit are Kathryn Jacobi, Luke Matjas, Miss Maytag Collective, Federiko Solmi, and Robert Williams. “Analog to Digital” runs from July 14 to September 2, 2011.

LACDA has been bringing us the best of digitally-produced art, including computer-generated and internet-based art, photography, video art, digital sculpture, and interactive multi-media since 2004. They are located at 102 West Fifth Street in Downtown Los Angeles, in the heart of Gallery Row.

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