26 June 2009 to 1 Aug 2009
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11 am - 6 pm
Opening: Fri., June 26, 6-8
Winkleman Gallery
637 West 27th Street (Ground Floor)
NY 10001
New York, NY
New York
North America
p: 212.643.3152
m:
f: 212.643.2040
w: www.winkleman.com
Shane Hope, Molecula Simianus En Balloonus Animalia Meet Nanotubular Lepidoptera, 2009 Archival pigment print, 48 x 48 in
June 26 – August 1, 2009 Opening: Friday, June 26, 6-8 PM
Summer Gallery Hours: Tue - Fri, 11-6 PM
Winkleman Gallery is very pleased to present “Your Mom Is Open Source,” our first solo exhibition by New York-based artist Shane Hope. In his latest suite of Molecular Modeling prints (“Mol Mods”) and “Compile-a-Child" drawings, Hope collapses possible futures like technoprogressive child's play. Foreseeable advances in neuro-, cyber-, gene-, and nano-technologies will likely snowball our transition into “posthumans,” beings whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards. Molecular manufacturing, artificial general intelligence, and life extension technologies may make possible the printing of printers, inventing inventors, as well as the expansion of ontological wiggle-room into and across novel substrates.
Asserting that art can provide key pictorial explorations into the ramifications of more precise manipulations of the smaller basic building blocks, Hope's "Mol Mods" playfully unravel the world at these scales by foreshadowing newly fantastical conflations of building and growing. Rendered and built with customized versions of user-sponsored open-source molecular visualization systems, these hyper-detailed monotypes anticipate their own actualization by way of nanofacture and picture junk sculptures, seashell crafts, among other molecularly doodled composited chimeras each developing from an embryonic stage; animals fashioned from flowchart cells woven into food webs connected by arrows that hitherto indicated the folds and twists of proteins; carbon nanotube moths flapping amidst balloon animal monkey molecules and less definitive evolutures with buckyballs in their eyes.
Hope also traces technological trajectories through his "Compile-a-Child” drawings, which appear as grade-school, diaristic musings of forecasted artificially selected mind-children. These speculative anecdotal vignettes include child instantiations restored from backup; “builtday” party activity lists; getting grounded as a singleton; uplifting sub-sentient life forms and not-quite-so-living things as domesticated pets; and saving money to afford the xmit rights to resurrect relatives. As in our present time, Hope's imagined offspring from the future command an unmistakable candor through which prescient peek-a-boos into all-powerful playpens innocently showcase our forthcoming world of transhumanity.
Shane Hope received his MFA from the University of California San Diego in 2002 and has attended the University of California Los Angeles, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He has exhibited at Virgil de Voldere Gallery in New York; Project Gentili, in Prato, Italy; iMAL (interactive Media Art Laboratory) in Brussels, Belgium, Rosamund Felson Gallery in Los Angeles and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Hope's work is also currently featured in the 2009 Prague Biennale.
Notes on images
Shane Hope , Hyperneckerdeathcube, 2009 Archival pigment print, 48 x 48 in
Hypercube - is an n-dimensional analogue of a square (n = 2) and a cube (n = 3). Necker Cube - is an optical illusion first published in 1832 by Swiss crystallographer Louis Albert Necker. Death Cube - Death cubes are computing devices designed to repeatedly run simulations of an uploaded consciousness, usually of human-equivalent intelligence. In this print can be seen: a kid's drawing of a molecule converted into a molecule model; Necker cube stair structure built from sheets of graphite; recolored graphite with revisualized sections in upper right; graphite strips entering from right; in upper left section, there's sundry atomic debris, proteins, DNA, sheets of graphite, novel synthetic molecules, forced secondary structures, viable nano-machinery parts, etc...
Shane Hope, Yes, but [grey goo] will be our children.2009 Archival pigment print, 48 x 48 in
Grey Goo - hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating robots consume all matter on Earth while building more of themselves (K. Eric Drexler coined). "Will robots inherit the earth? Yes, but they will be our children." - Marvin Minsky In this print can be seen: sundry atomic debris, proteins, DNA, sheets of graphite, novel synthetic molecules, forced secondary structures, viable nano-machinery parts, etc...
Shane Hope, On Graphite, 2009 Archival pigment print, 48 x 48in
The background is carbon graphite armature upon which other molecular models are arranged / hung / bonded. Reversal of the typical 'graphite on...'. Notable, quite a lot of what might be viewed as distinct color and structural objects in this print are merely colorizations and revisualizations of the background graphite itself. In this print can be seen: novel molecular non-objective sculpture; spectral atomic sprays; molecular string(theory)art using only graphite atomic coordinates; a kid's drawing of a molecule converted into a molecule model; viable nano-machinery parts; apparently moldy sections resultant from rescripting visualization hacks for sections of surface on the giant sheet of background graphite...
Shane Hope , Junk DNA Sculptural Ontogenesis, 2009 Archival pigment print, 48 x 48 in
Junk sculpture - three-dimensional art made from discarded material junk DNA - a region of DNA that usually consists of a repeating DNA sequence, does not code for protein, and has no known function ontogenesis - the development or course of development especially of an individual organism In this print can be seen: a human developing into a puffy cloud of utility fog; a fishing lure, a shell craft and a junk sculpture each developing from an embryonic stage; faces with buckyballs for eyes; a head growing up in a flowerpot; a sheet of graphite hacked to visualize instead like a logic board; molecular string(theory)art; viable synthetic molecular machine parts; stretched DNA origami; molecular structures tweaked with scripted hacks; and more...
Winkleman Gallery and Schroeder Romero are very pleased to announce the launch of "Summer Sexy," an online exhibition about sun and surf and sensuality!
Over the next seven weeks, on the Summer Sexy website, we'll continually present the artwork selected by a wide range of collectors, curators, and artists who have their fingers on the pulse of what's "sizzling" in contemporary art.
Because we're well aware that times are tough for many people and organizations, though, we've also asked each of the participating collectors, curators and artists to select a charity to whom proceeds from any sale of the work in the exhibition will go in their name. After the year we've all had, we certainly deserve a bit of fun in the sun, but there's no reason we can't also help others at the same time.
