Beyond Digital

Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to present Beyond Digital, an exhibition featuring highlights from the RF.C Collection, a cross-disciplinary art collection founded by Pablo Rodríguez-Fraile and Desiree Casoni. On view from February 10th - March 14th, Beyond Digital brings together pioneering digital artists whose work explores the possibilities of bridging the digital and the physical realms.

As early adopters of emergent technologies, Pablo Rodríguez-Fraile, mathematician, blockchain investor and founder of Aorist, and Desiree Casoni, architect and designer, have spent the past twelve years developing what is now one of the world’s premiere digital art collections. Having been among the first collectors of artists such as Refik Anadol, Beeple, Pak, and Andrés Reisinger, their enduring support of digital artists has cemented them as leaders and ambassadors within the field.

The works in Beyond Digital, including static and dynamic NFTs displayed on screens as well as framed prints and physical objects, exemplify the concept of digital art less as a technology and more as a medium which holds immense potential for dynamic expression, opening up new possibilities for traversing the physical realm. Andrés Reisinger’s Hortensia chair, existing initially as a digital rendering and driven into physical form via a viral response to the image on social media, exemplifies a complex engagement across multiple dimensions. Through his advanced use of algorithms and exploration of machine intelligence, Refik Anadol creates dynamic dream-like hallucinations which augment and transform our perceptions of the physical world through data-driven aesthetics.

Other artists exemplify how digital mediation can allow for new levels of depth and dynamism not afforded by analog production, such as by modulating a work’s temporality. In Daniel Arsham’s Eroding and Reforming Bust of Rome (One Year), a bust inspired by an ancient piece from the Louvre’s collection decays and disintegrates within a courtyard expressing the changing seasons, with the cycle perpetually renewing every year. By creating a digital image each day as part of his Everydays series, Beeple’s work marks the passage of time, transforming the traditional timescales of artistic production.

Beyond Digital explores the resonances and dissonances apparent within the hybridization of art and technology, embracing the new forms that emerge through such slippages. Rather than suggesting a transcendence or subsuming of the physical by the digital, these artists employ an interplay between the two.

Featured Artists: Refik Anadol, Daniel Arsham, Beeple, Dmitri Cherniak, Kjetil Golid, Pak, Trevor Jones, Quayola, Andrés Reisinger, Helena Sarin, Slime Sunday, Hideki Tsukamoto, Vini Naso, XCOPY.