LOS ANGELES — Invisibility: Powers & Perils at Oxy Arts at Occidental Faculty appears to be like on the penalties of that which can’t be seen. Curator Yael Lipschutz brings in an eclectic vary of artists on this examination: a primary version of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) and a two-channel video projection by Sondra Perry that contemplate invisibility’s position on Black identification; a cluster of works coping with expertise, together with encryption, information, and deepfakes; and bespoke scents by Katie Paterson and taxidermied fowl specimens that confront the looming way forward for invisibility through extinction within the pure world.
Although every of those works is robust, as a group, the present ping-pongs from one theme to a different, breaking apart a cohesive message. Primarily based on the gallery’s structure, as an illustration, the primary work a customer will probably encounter is Invisible Man, which is protected in a vitrine and mounted above a classic unfold from Life journal that pairs promotion of the e book with haunting portraits and assemblages by famed photographer Gordon Parks. This implies that the present would possibly middle Blackness. But the remainder of the artworks on this first part flip towards topics as various as radiation, black holes, information, and synthetic intelligence, none of which have been created by Black artists.
The work of the 2 Black artists within the 13-person present is housed within the bigger part of the gallery. Tavares Strachan’s “The Encyclopedia of Invisibility” (2018), a 2400-page tome devoted to intangible sensations and ignored histories, is poignantly displaying the entry for Palestine, and since the e book is protected behind glass, nobody can erase its existence. Behind the e book, in its personal nook, is Sondra Perry’s “Double Quadruple Negative Etcetera I & II” (2013), a two-channel video set up by which two dancers flail about, an AI-driven software rendering them a fast-changing patchwork of drywall. All that identifies them as Black is their hair texture and the occasional blurred brow, a uncommon occasion by which massive tech is used to guard slightly than exploit.
Tavares Strachan, “The Encyclopedia of Invisibility” (2018), leather-based, gilding, archival paper, maple, felt and acrylic
One other charming two-channel video that leverages AI is an excerpt from “Soft Evidence” (2021) by the artwork collective Operator (Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti), which reveals the identical lady in numerous settings. In a single channel, she’s studying a newspaper in an eerie drycleaning store. Within the different, the lady stares blankly on the display screen. “That’s not me,” she says in a monotone, seemingly referring to the truth that she doesn’t truly exist: The whole movie is sort of convincingly deepfaked.
Whereas such critiques on expertise dominate a lot of this exhibition, because it’s a part of the Getty PST: Artwork and Science Collide initiative, a number of works confront the local weather disaster. In “To Burn, Forest, Fire” (2021), consisting of two bespoke incense sticks, one made with traces of liverwort, quartz sandstone, and ferns, Paterson calls consideration to endangered ecosystems by imagining the smells of the Cairo Forest, the world’s first forest, now a group of 385-million-year-old fossils in New York’s Hudson Valley. The opposite stick smells just like the mossy and endangered Amazon rainforest, warning us that it’d quickly endure the identical destiny as its predecessor.
Invisibility looks like a brainstorming session, with nodes sprouting from a central theme. However I wished to see a thousand extra thought bubbles within the type of artworks tacked onto every idea to extra absolutely flesh it out. This present raises thrilling questions round racial, technological, and ecological invisibility, and leaves us asking for extra.
Set up view of Invisibility: Powers & Perils
Set up view of Operator (Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti), “Soft Evidence” (2021), two-channel video, deepfake algorithm, synthetic intelligence, typewriter
Invisibility: Powers & Perils, a part of Getty’s PST ART: Artwork & Science Collide initiative, continues at Oxy Arts at Occidental Faculty (4757 York Boulevard, Los Angeles) by means of February 22. The exhibition was curated by Yael Lipschutz.
