Kyle Trowbridge: The Politics of Time
Feb. 10, 2012 - March 31, 2012
Opening reception Feb. 10, 2012, 6 p.m. - 9 p.m.
Dorsch Gallery is pleased to present Kyle Trowbridge's solo exhibition, The Politics of Time.
Trowbridge presents technology, the way it has permeated all levels of social interaction, as an uncharted problem. In his paintings, the old and new uncomfortably co-exist.
For several years Trowbridge has been investigating how technology alters the dynamics of inter-human relationships. His grand new paintings are at once abstract geometric paintings and functioning Quick Response (QR) codes. They are about 8 feet square. Their appearance, paint handling and palette reference canons of abstract geometric painting, such as Gerhard Richter's Color Chart paintings (1966-), Piet Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942-43), Hans Hoffman's later abstract paintings and Josef Albers' Homage to a Square (1965).
On the other hand, these colorful paintings, once scanned with the proper application, yield a text written by the artist. Usually one sees these QR codes, the next generation of barcodes, on product packaging and promotion materials. Scanning the black and white squares with a QR application on a smart phone can link the user to websites, text, and other kinds of data at a remote source. The hallmark of a QR code is an equal sized square within a square, repeated three times in the lower left, upper left and upper right corners of a larger square. With the frame established, a computer can read, in a zigzagged and zoned pattern, the binary code contained within it.
Trowbridge presents technology, the way it has permeated all levels of social interaction, as an uncharted problem. In his paintings, the old and new uncomfortably co-exist. He writes, "while my aesthetic choices pay homage to these great masters, these paintings are by no way caught in the past. There is one great departure from their work. These paintings speak. Not just on a sublime level that many of the abstract masters sought to achieve, but on a literal level. Staying true to my usual modus operandi - I am interested in creating works that look one way and behave another. A wolf in sheep's clothing if you will. Using these QR codes as a foundation not only supplies a solid geometric abstraction to paint from, but provides me with a scannable code that can house a phrase or idiom that I pen. This in turn allows the viewer to interact with my paintings in the classic sense of art viewing, on a purely aesthetic level; or in a physically interactive manner in which the use of their smart phones as scanners will reveal the "word art" embedded within."
The fast reading of the painting, that of the word art one can connect to digitally, interrupts the impulse to read the paintings art historically, against the aspects of mid-century abstract painting. Words intrude on a mindscape pondering the visual impact of contrasting squares of saturated color. They are like blaring highway signs for South of the Border against the subtle Carolina landscape. This dissonant juxtaposition suggests loss; what our plugged-in society gains in our hyper connectivity we lose much more - our ability to think. But the nostalgic reading is perhaps too simplistic. The confrontational language in Trowbridge's words re-iterates that. We can take these paintings as a stark demonstration of what we are grappling with. This technology is here to stay; in enlisting new tools to mash-up visual experience, we have to develop a new vocabulary to investigate their impact.
Trowbridge is a native Floridian who lives and works in Miami. He is also a full-time professor at the University of Miami. His work has been exhibited internationally in Toronto, Santo Domingo, New York, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles and the Vienna Biennale. Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport have works by Trowbridge in their collections. His large-scale word art installation, Site of Temporarily Invested Interest, was included in a group exhibition of installations at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale in Summer 2011.
The Politics of Time, 2012, installation shot
The Politics of Time, 2012, installation shot
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