dynamic digital art traverses the physical realm in venus over manhattan's latest exhibition

Beyond Digital at Venus Over Manhattan

From February 10 to March 14, 2023, New York-based gallery Venus Over Manhattan presents ‘Beyond Digital,’ an interdisciplinary art collection founded by blockchain investor and founder of NFT-focused cultural institution Aorist, Pablo Rodríguez-Fraile, and architect and designer Desiree Casoni.

Rodríguez-Fraile and Casoni have spent over a decade building an extensive collection of digital artworks that explore new technologies, while this ongoing support of digital artists has established them as pioneers and ambassadors in the field. Beyond Digital brings together pioneering artists whose work explores the possibilities of bridging the digital and physical worlds. The exhibition features Refik Anadol, Daniel Arsham, Beeple, Dmitri Cherniak, Kjetil Golid, Pak, Trevor Jones, Quayola, Andrés Reisinger, Helena Sarin, Slime Sunday, Hideki Tsukamoto, Vini Naso, XCOPY.

Refik Anadol, Machine Hallucinations – Mars – Collector’s Edition, 2021, Token (dynamic) | all images courtesy of Venus Over Manhattan (header: Video Still from Daniel Arsham, Eroding and Reforming Bust of Rome (One Year), 2021)

digital art that traverses the physical realm

Works in Beyond Digital include static and dynamic NFTs displayed on screens, framed prints, and physical objects. The exhibition at Venus Over Manhattan (find more here) encourages visitors to think of digital art less as technology and more as a medium with the potential for dynamic expression that opens up new possibilities for traversing the physical realm.

Andrés Reisinger’s Hortensia chair, initially created as a digital rendering and later transformed into a physical object after the image sparked a viral response on social media, is an example of the use of digital art in multiple dimensions. Meanwhile, Refik Anadol’s skillful use of algorithms and exploration of machine intelligence create powerful illusionary hallucinations that expand and alter our perception of the physical world through data-driven aesthetics.

Beeple, Abundance, 2021, Token (dynamic) and screen

Other featured artists illustrate how digital mediation can enable a new level of depth and dynamism that analog production does not, such as regulating the temporality of a work. 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. As part of his Everydays series, Beeples creates a digital image every day to mark the passage of time and alter the traditional time scales 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.’ the exhibition description at Venus Over Manhattan’s official website explains. ‘Rather than suggesting a transcendence or subsuming of the physical by the digital, these artists employ an interplay between the two.’

Slimesunday x 3LAU, FRGS, 2018, Token