Glitch

1301PE is pleased to present Glitch, featuring Petra Cortright, Blake Rayne, Simryn Gill, SUPERFLEX, Keaton Macon and the Concinnitas portfolio. The exhibition tries to consider the imperfect relationship we have to technology and its various systems. It is neither Utopian or Dystopian, but rather a moment to meditate on the consequences of a belief system.

 A glitch can be understood as a malfunction, an irregularity, or an error, beyond just a website crash, a file deletion, or an iCloud document refusing to load. Usually temporary, and sometimes expected, it is momentary reminder of our lack of control. This brief interruption is frustrating and inefficient, but maybe necessary – a pause that allows us to realize technology’s promise to us is sometimes broken. Rather than working with us, it goes against us. Our effort to push technology forward and our desire for its constant improvement is not a mutual exchange. Technology owes us nothing.

 The work in this exhibition addresses this lack of reciprocity and reminds us of its consequences. Petra Cortright interferes with the system of painting through her digitized strokes; Blake Rayne’s work tests how painting is responding to shifts in perceptual regimes, labor conditions, and temporal paradigms; Simryn Gill’s wordplay changes intended meaning and takes away context; SUPERFLEX’s large-scale mural points to asymmetric access to data and to the right of all people to information; Keaton Macon’s audio tapes alter the system of sound, changing its resonance according to where its recorded, and then played; the Concinnitas series finds a form of beauty derived from harmony in numbers and proportion. Glitch, in its brief pause, creates a space for this reflection.