- Venue
- Usher Gallery
- Location
- East Midlands
‘Datascapes’ presents computer-based art to the Lincoln public, arranged within a comforting layer of sublime landscapes and recognisable images.
The large scale, vibrant works sit easily within the Usher Gallery.
The work oscillates in its successes, from the self-referential ‘Googlegram: Medusa’ 2007 to the intensely touching and human ‘Googlegram: 11-M Madrid’ 2004; the Googlegram series consists of photomontages made up of images pulled from Google through related search terms. The text then informs the image, reflected in the journalistic tone of the composite form – reminiscent of Sigmar Polke. This offers a deeper contextualisation, made clear through the annotated images.
This depth of meaning reinforces the consideration of time within the work: the papparazzi style, rapid image is distorted by it’s laborious and layered method.
The artists, however, is obscured by the twee software used – he is an operator for the software designer. The audience is made uncertain; both pushed and pulled by the conflicting scale of the work and it’s tone – torn between the seriousness of the narrative and its almost motivational poster, flippant layout.
This tone is reinforced by the ‘Oregeneosis’ series within the show; with vast, airbrushed and improbable landscapes.
Imporbable, indeed, as the landscapes exist solely within their authorial software. These works are created from famous artworks, fed through a programme that reasds the contours and forms of the image in order to generate a digital landscape (used more often in cartography).
Thhis is an interesting discussion on how the software is programmed to ‘see’, nudging towards the personification of the digital, yet the concept seems too convoluted to clearly define the artist’s intention.
Through ‘Datascapes’, Fontcuberta has placed some provokative debates into an accessible format, maintaining a playfulness that develops his status as the maker, yet I feel the reliance on this exploration of technology could obscure his intention.
