TechNoBody @ Pelham Art Center

Pelham Art Center is pleased to present TechNoBody, a group exhibition that explores the mediated world’s impact on and relationship to the physical body in an increasingly virtual world. The exhibition will include video works, drawings and sculpture that alternately balance and question the hope and desire of the immaterial, extended, digital body against the realities of the physical, fragile, and ephemeral body. The exhibition will be on view from January 23 through March 21, 2015. An opening reception and free all ages art workshop will be held on Friday, January 23, 2015, 6:30 – 8PM. A Panel Discussion with the curator and the artists will be held on Thursday, March 19 at 6PM. Attendees will learn more about how the artists employ a diverse range of contemporary artistic tools, from cyberbodies, avatars and selfies to facial peel and simple paper and pencil. Curated by Patricia Miranda.

Technology has expanded humanity’s ability to alter the physical and intellectual worlds in significant ways. Modern digital technologies extend the borders of the body and mind, questioning the relentless tether to the material. Closely intertwined with our bodies, technology acts as our external brain, able to recall enormous amounts of information at a touch. It can act as avatar, realizing our best, worst, and most desired or unexpected self, promising to solve the intractable problems of the world. Utopian and aspirational, technology hints at a fountain of immortality, the imperfect self uploaded to faultless machine, while opening doors for the dystopian world of surveillance and corporate appropriation of our most private desires. And yet, the fragile real maintains a hold; the digital still presents in the physical. We exist, for now, in tangible bodies in real time and space, bodies that reveal our cultural circumstance of place, race, gender, and privilege, that age, fail, and cease to exist in the world. Technology, our intimate companion, develops with us and unbeknownst to us, and watches, as we are willingly captivated and captive to its charms, inspired by and fearful of its possibility. TechNoBody investigates the perceptions and experiences of the body in the technological world, engaging scientific concepts in the ambiguous language of art. These artists examine and problematize the role of the machine for both our private and public selves, deconstructing our tacit agreement to its terms.

Artists: Christopher Baker, Carla Gannis, Claudia Hart, Cynthia Lin, Joyce Yu-Jean Lee, Laura Splan, Victoria Vesna

Admission is free and open to the public.

Pelham Art Center 155 Fifth Avenue Pelham, NY 10803 914-738-2525 info@pelhamartcenter.org

Hours: Tuesday–Friday, 10–5pm; Saturday, 10–4pm

Directions: Located 5 blocks from the Hutchinson Parkway exit 12 and 2 blocks from the Metro North Pelham stop