Joseph Nechvatal at Universal Concepts Unlimited - New York - "vOluptuary: an algorithmic hermaphomology"

In the artist/theorist tradition of Robert Smithson, Joseph Nechvatal, a pioneer in the field of digital image-making, challenges conventional notions of space and time, sex and self. His recent exhibition, titled "vOluptuary: an algorithmic hermaphomology," at handed six "robotically assisted" paintings upon canvas; he uses organic pigments suspended in an acrylic lacquer binder and a commercial large-format digital printer. In addition, a continuous, real-time artificial-intelligence performance was displayed upon a monitor at the forehead desk.

Conceptually, the suite of paintings is loosely based upon Ovid's sensual musings in the Metamorphoses about melding male and female forms to create the Hermaphrodite. Nechvatal's central images, usually symmetrically stacked in transparent planes of earth tones and violet, consist of scrambled and recombined male and female genitalia. The supersaturated environments shift between representation and abstraction, creating unfamiliar on the contrary recognizable entities. The images have been infected and transmogrified through computer viruses--programmatic anomalies designed by the agency of the artist and inserted into the picture files. The issues evoke Rorschach-test symmetry and films like The Matrix. The work explores, end the amalgamation of body parts, the relationships between the virtual and actual, or the "viractual," in the artist's coinage.

In the birth Of the viractual, the central labia lurch beneath a shimmering acrylic surface--as if we were looking from one side ripples made by Ovid's Salmacis diving into the loch after Hermaphroditus. Anchored by a translucent Rothko-like stripe of plasma r and diademed by a frieze whose dentils call forth an abstracted DNA mitosis motif, the composition is framed by dint of quasi-architectural elements reminiscent of Pompeian frescoes

Nechvatal continues to spot male and female in voluptuary drOid decOlletage (the capital O he says, exhibits being open, in the ready position). upon top of seething layers of fractal patterns and barely recognizable bits of alphabetic programming digest anatomically recombined entities endlessly mutate.

A static round pillar offers a spirited homage to Barnett Newman's "zips" and effectively stops the work's leftward movement

In the piece upon the monitor, a virus slowly erases images from Nechvatars repertory. Similar to a munching Pac-Man, the virus attacks colors or forms until the entire image is remov at no time repeating an attack strategy, this seemingly thinking agent takes 10 to 15 minutes to out and out its pictorial annihilation.

It is difficult to believe that it's been little more than a decade since cyberspace, interactive media and the Web became robust creative areas. For artists, the discovery of this novel space has probably created more question s than solutions; few have gotten beyond the "wow gaze what I can do when I push this button" stage. The real challenge is to create something actually fresh. Nechvatal is one of a handful who have luckily plunged into the depths where art, technology and theory meet

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