Some of you may remember the 2022 exhibition It’s Complicated, Is Possibly Art by Elias Wessel, a selection of works that invert the digital space, playing with the seemingly non-corporeal, ephemeral, and magical forces tracking and shaping our experience. The exhibition gave visible, audible, and physical form to the orchestration behind the pictured scenes, and the resulting fragmented, incomprehensible nature of language, individual identity, and digital communication.
Now, Wessel has brought a selection of these works to Picture Theory Gallery in Chelsea! This exhibition of It’s Complicated, in collaboration with Natalia Kiës, features 11 photographic installations and a sound installation.
It’s Complicated is an inspection of media algorithms and our relationships with the seemingly irresistible nature of social media. Wessel documents the real-life scrolling of social media users by utilizing a long-exposure that culminates in abstract compositions. These photographs serve as reflections and metaphors to the indistinct boundaries between man and machine — inviting viewers to rethink digital media and consider the relativistic, incomplete, and fragmented worldview we consume daily. Wessel is concerned with the psychophysiological experience of a visual reality. Artificial Intelligence becomes a focal point with the visual-to-text recognition “poems” (Is Possibly Art; Textfetzen), accompanying each photograph. The artist seeks to visualize questions such as “How does digital space react to analog space?” or “How can we find clear meaning in the mass of information noise, without a discernible, trusted source?”
Systems at Play is a sound installation in collaboration with musician Natalia Kiës, where sounds become a reflective dimension of immersing oneself in a web of digital distraction; oscillating between sound, between platforms, and between algorithms. It offers a chance to see, hear and enjoy the absurdity of the information we consume, and the disorienting, changing structure of language and communication. – Evyn Bileri Banawoye
The exhibition will be on view until September 1st! 1014 is excited for Elias Wessel and happy to see that his amazing work continues to be on view for all of us.