CHRIS DORLAND @chris_dorland Exhibition: Active User @nicoletticontemporary Text Excerpt by Camille Houzé Comprising two site-specific video works presented alongside a series of new paintings and Alumacore panels, Active User channels the mind bending spirit of science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick (1928-1982), whose dark and humorous vision challenged established understanding of both the nature of reality and the reality of nature. As the 21st Century unfolds, the progressively all-encompassing digital realm forces a redistribution of the coordinates through which humanity could hitherto differentiate what is real from what is not, generating increasingly complex living environments within which it becomes possible to inhabit the best suiting algorithmic series. Dorland’s exhibition analyses these mechanisms by reflecting upon the ramifications of human consciousness stemming from the gradually perplexed differentiation between actual and virtual environments, real and imaginary dimensions. In a world in which the splintering of interests and values give way to the construction of alternating and competing realities, resulting in the progressive vanishing of objective truth, Active User is conceived as a glitching gateway through which communication flows between oscillating realities and conditions. Displayed across the gallery space, Dorland’s paintings and Alumacore panels are created with images that are filtered and glitched through successive operations of iterations and translations of data – moving between scanner, camera, software and printer. The resulting compositions are superimpositions of distorted images and varyingly pixelated elements which evoke fluctuating planes of perception upon which alternately dissolve and materialise physical objects and numerical fields. Active User attempts to conjure up the interstitial spaces where actual and virtual modes of perception and intellection interweave. Dorland’s physical works are set in relation with two video simulations which reference video games and simulated war games; they invite the viewer to shift from passive viewing to active playing. #chrisdorland #activeuser #nicoletticontemporary (en NICOLETTI) https://www.instagram.com/p/CASo-TKFbnU/?igshid=ozaljxatjhcd
