Jon Kessler
dal 3/3/2013 al 27/4/2013
Segnalato da
3/3/2013
Jon Kessler
Swiss Institute, New York
'The Web' is an immersive installation that addresses the significance of the Internet and mobile devices in our lives while simultaneously examining the role of the viewer. It offers both an accessible and impermeable user experience, the title referencing a closed-circuit network accessed by viewers.
A commission by the Métamatic Research Initiative, Amsterdam
The Web is an immersive installation that addresses the significance of the Internet and mobile devices in
our lives while simultaneously examining the role of the viewer. The idea for the piece came to Jon Kessler
on a New York subway ride when he realized that at least half of the riders were speaking on their cell
phones, sending text messages, playing video games, or otherwise immersing themselves in their
networked mobile devices.
The Web offers both an accessible and impermeable user experience, the title referencing a closed-circuit
network accessed by viewers. Upon entering the exhibition, visitors are invited to download an iPhone app
that feeds their images in real time onto surrounding monitors. Simultaneously pictured and reframed in
Kessler’s sculpture Infinite Regress, spectators render themselves as nodes within a feedback network,
the space a physical support for their virtual daydreams. Kessler’s creation broadcasts collected data,
targeting viewers with images of themselves, their experience, and ultimately enticing input and
generating output.
Much like the Internet itself, The Web acts as both a sentient organism and an environmental space: it
facilitates the internal circuit between viewer, camera, and monitor, while simultaneously doubling as a
sprawling architectural structure. While The Web conceptually foregrounds the role of networked
technologies and our dependence on them, it is in many ways a tribute to direct experience. The viewer of
The Web is repositioned among fellow viewers, with the feeling of sensory dislocation condensed into one
geographic location—the exhibition space—and recast as a form of shared collective immersion.
Jon Kessler’s work explores the connection between bodily movement and technical
apparatus, often deploying mechanisms and video to facilitate this relationship. He has
had solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the
Phoenix Kulturstiftung; Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg, Germany; the Louisiana
Museum of Moderne Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark; and most recently, the Fisher Landau
Center for Art, New York. Kessler has been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship as well as
honors from the Foundation of the Performing Arts; he is a professor at Columbia
University’s School of the Arts, Division of Visual Arts.
The Métamatic Research Initiative (MRI) stems from the fascination of art collectors Allard and Natascha
Jakobs with the work of Jean Tinguely, and a more general interest in questions about the authorship of
works of art. MRI strives to deal with issues that arise from the work of Jean Tinguely, in particular his
Métamatic works. By initiating a variety of assignments for artists they instigate a process of artistic
research resulting in contemporary works addressing these issues.
The exhibition will travel to Museum Tinguely, Basel, in October 2013.
For additional information on The Web, including press images, please contact Piper Marshall:
piper@swissinstitute.net.
Opening: Monday, March 4, 6 – 8 PM
Swiss Institute / CONTEMPORARY ART
18 Wooster Street - New York NY 10013
Gallery Opening Hours
Wednesday to Sunday, 12 - 6 PM
Free entry