bitforms gallery presents "Pointillisme", a new body of work by Italian artist Quayola. Constructing immersive installations, often at historically significant architectural sites, the artist reimagines canonical imagery through contemporary technology: Quayola employs technology to explore the tensions and equilibriums between the real and artificial, the figurative and abstract, the old and new.
"Pointillisme" continues the artist's ongoing exploration of high-precision laser scanning systems and their inherited imperfections. Drawing a parallel between historical pictorial traditions and computational aesthetics, this project speculates as to new landscape paintings and video created by machines. While reproducing similar conditions to those favored by ‘en plein air’ painters of the late 19th century, natural landscapes are expressed through video compositions and a series of inkjet prints.
Similarly, inkjet prints from the artist's "Storms" focuses on the pictorial substance of plein air studies with tools of advanced technologies. The action, color, and choreography of Quayola's Storms are generated by data sourced from ultra-high-definition footage of stormy seas in Cornwall, England. Quayola uses algorithms to provoke the sea as if viewed for the first time; foreign, yet familiar. Each seascape blends mnemonic, historical, and retinal knowledge to comprise a printed painting made up of pixels.
"Storms" debuted at the gallery's New York space in November 2021. The series is intended as an exhibition of unfinished artworks that paint themselves over time. Although each video contains pictorial forms that crumble towards abstraction, the works maintain their connection with data as a driving force.