January 12 to February 11, 2018
106 Forsyth Street, between Grand and Broome streets
New York City, lylesandking.com

Technological singularity—the point at which the velocity of advancement reaches infinity—is, some say, close at hand. The manner in which innovation accelerates, with new discoveries speeding up further progress, is similar, perhaps not coincidentally, to compound interest. Moore’s Law predicted a doubling of circuit transistor density every two years, a trend that—despite pesky limitations like the size of individual atoms—seems accurate for the foreseeable future. The human body, in comparison, naturally advances on an evolutionary timescale, measured by incremental changes over thousands or millions of years. How can humanity compete with this insane pace? Are we doomed to become slaves to our creations as in so many sci-fi dystopias? Rather than seeing this scenario as a conflict between man and machine, these advancements could be thought of as augmenting our humanity, as in transhumanism, or as an indistinguishable addition to the increasingly meaningless category of “the human” as in some lines of posthumanist thought. Chris Dorland’s work, on view at Lyles & King, seems to be in line with this latter interpretation. His Alumacore prints and video works, created using layers of images altered by digital glitches, merge human and digital actions into a single substance is neither one nor the other.

Openness to chance occurrences is hardly new in art: Building on Dada and Surrealist experimentation, Francis Bacon threw handfuls of paint at his canvases to disrupt his existing imagery while John Cage performed on prepared pianos designed to produce random sounds. A glitch isn’t simple randomness, however: it is the intersection and confusion of multiple processes, like a machine misinterpreting data meant for some other use, or a circuit that allows its signal to be altered by outside noise. In whatever way a specific glitch may have been cultivated, it represents the “will” of digital processes altering, if not overpowering, that of the humans who created such systems in the first place. Dorland’s broken and hacked machines are his co-creators, and while the artist ultimately has the final say on how each piece turns out, these decisions are influenced by their non-human digital labor.

Can Dorland’s human touch be visibly distinguished from the digital logic of a machine? Untitled (Overclock) (2017) features a woman’s eyeless face, seemingly lifted from a makeup ad, distorted in a manner indicating that it was moved around while being scanned. This is the only recognizable image in the piece: Everything else is abstract. and while it seems to follow a certain logic (such as the vertical division between fields of red and blue), any larger human meaning is lost in an inscrutable pile of digital artifacts. Untitled (Drone Psychic) (2017) practically forces an abstract reading of its imagery, lacking any clues to the sources of its densely-layered and distorted material. There are several painterly passages in which skeins of acidic color ooze and flow together, but what these “brushstrokes” may actually be must remain a mystery, with any identifying information having been corrupted or deleted in the piece’s creation.

Played on a TV leaning against the wall, Dorland’s video Untitled (memory cortex) (2017) is a montage of glitched imagery in motion. Snippets of occasionally legible text—computer code and Japanese message board comments—float above footage from a first-person shooter video game as its color palette jumps between the red, green, and blue channels of computer graphics output. Any details about the game’s narrative are hidden in a swirling mass of images and text overlaying the already distorted footage.

Dorland’s work can be appreciated as abstraction, but pieces of images hint at deeper processes behind their generation. Untitled (Drift Upload) (2017) has bits of racecars splayed across its surface, disrupted by red blocks and horizontal black lines. A spiderweb of shattered glass, like the cracked screen of a smartphone, breaks the picture’s upper-right corner. Most of the prints feature such fractures, reminders of the broken border between the two worlds we regularly inhabit. The world depicted through Dorland’s work isn’t a cyberpunk dystopia as popularized in sci-fi, but it isn’t the utopia-for-profit envisioned by Silicon Valley “tech bros” either. It is more akin to an atopia, a place without borders or boundaries, like a broken screen trying, and failing, to keep separate the “real” and the “digital.”

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A modest room of small pictures, Mira Schor’s project space exhibition, The Red Tie Paintings, pulsates with lyrical fury. These Goyaesque allegories exude shamanic urgency, as if painted for purposes of exorcism. The artist does indeed describe a cathartic functionality for these works: “A day in the studio begins with the instantaneity of response to that day’s repellent news, which I can articulate very freely in ink and gouache on paper.” Red and black are at once symbolically charged and formally potent chromatic choices. The dramatis personae in this fiery suite include limp dicks, a melting swastika, eyes that are also vaginas and bleed, the Owl of Minerva (she who rises only at dusk) and the eponymous, synechdochal necktie that comes to menacing, serpentine life, a device that recalls anthropomorphized props in a William Kentridge animation. Artistic sisters channeled include Charlotte Salomon, Nancy Spero and Sue Coe. At once deeply personal and fiercely political, this is poetry meets therapy meets agit prop meets magic.
On view through January 7, 2018, 106 Forsyth Street at Broome Street, lylesandking.com

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October 9 to November 15, 2015
106 Forsyth Street (between Grand and Broome streets)
New York, 646 484 5478

In her first solo exhibition at Lyles & King, entitled ”WHERE LIFE IS HAPPENING,” artist Davina Semo uses industrial materials, evoking facets of urban life that feel simultaneously in-progress and unchanging. Made from concrete, leather, light, and glass, the works are installed in a way that asks the viewer to make decisions about how to move through the space, move around the works, and how to interact with the lights, some of which are too bright to look at. A piece entitled THE NOISE IS PITCHED TO A LEVEL OF PAIN SHE ABSORBS AS A PERSONAL TEST (all works 2015) is broken at the edge, concrete scattered a bit. There is a visual loudness like that of walking through New York City — encountering idiosyncratic obstructions and construction sites, comfortable walking paths and strange objects to look at and walk by, which the floor of the gallery, also an industrial concrete, reinforces.

The most captivating pieces are the pegboard-like vault lights of reinforced concrete and cast glass, with the many-colored glass pieces fit into small hexagonal openings in concrete slabs. The light casts these shapes on the walls. It’s hard to tell which side is which. I’m not sure there is a “front” or a “back.” Rather, the viewer is asked to look at both the top and the bottom — accessing the surface of the city and what’s underneath. Semo expands on vault lights, which are set into pavement and traditionally used to let light into whatever’s below. By isolating these jeweled sidewalk interruptions, Semo opens the space of the gallery.

At the back wall is I AM A PATIENT GIRL; I WAIT I WAIT I WAIT, consisting of seven folding chairs held together with zip ties. Beneath five of the chairs lie what appear to be cast steel box cutters, blades exposed and pointing rightward.

The titles activate the work. The consistent use of the female pronoun narrates while also pointing to a parallel universe where the titles exist as a work in and of themselves. A row of three reinforced concrete-and-glass sculptures lie diagonally about a foot from the floor via cylindrical stands. They are severely slanted and facing a bright light. The effect that this light has on the eyes is that of a construction light at night. Merciless and austere, it casts circular shadows on the floor and illuminates the already glowy multicolored glass rivulets. These resemble amped up pegs in an amped up pegboard. These three sculptures are titled:

SHE FEELS HER SMILE FLOATING IN THE AIR ABOUT SIX INCHES FROM HER FACE

SHE TOUCHES HIM, TOUCHES HERSELF, POINTS TOWARD THE FLOOR

SHE DOES NOT SPEAK OR ACT IN A NERVOUS WAY, BUT THERE IS A VIBE OF INTENSE TENSION ABOUT HER

The title of the show, “WHERE LIFE IS HAPPENING,” is indicative of a feeling of moving through the overstimulation of the industrial zones where objects often exist in the space between useful and out-of-commission. Semo uses polarity to great effect, as the hardness of the pieces point to breakability. Similarly, Semo’s hand feels present and also not; the sculptures almost seem found. There are three wall pieces that slightly offset the concrete floor sculptures. I MAKE MYSELF STILL, TO LISTEN is a concrete-and-leather wall piece with a chain in the shape of an X hanging just below another X pressed into the surface. There are two other leather and concrete wall pieces: LOOK AT NO ONE, REVEAL NOTHING, REMAIN STILL and AFTER A WHILE THE SUN MOVES AND THE SUNLIGHT COMES RIGHT ON THE BED. These actively witness the rest of the show, their titles address stillness and listening while the other titles in the show are action points.

The only floor sculpture which lies entirely on the floor, THE NOISE IS PITCHED TO A LEVEL OF PAIN SHE ABSORBS AS A PERSONAL TEST (mentioned above), made from reinforced concrete, rock salt, and cast glass, points to a level of overstimulation to the point of breaking. One hears about the ways in which urban noises impact the nervous system. This sculpture feels the most overtly human — with an inscription on the top: 2015 and on the bottom: SEMO. Like the other concrete sculptures, this is reminiscent of a pegboard — but more deflated and tired — a board at rest and broken at the upper right corner. “WHERE LIFE IS HAPPENING” is exciting because the viewer is in the midst of it — of Semo’s industrious world between useful and out-of-commission.

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