Bead by Bead, Pixel by Pixel: Alyssa Davis' "Secrets to Graceful Living"
Ultimately, Davis settled on “Secrets to Graceful Living,” unanimously agreed upon by featured artists Anna Pederson and Radimir Koch. On view at ARTXNYC through February 25th, “Secrets to Graceful Living” highlights two artists who, at first glance, work in wildly different mediums. Koch’s contributions are large-scale resin sculptures, digitally sculpted using ZBrush and borne into the physical realm through 3D printing. Pederson, meanwhile, produces small beaded tapestries, meticulously woven using bead looms.
In spite of their superficial differences, both artist collections are informed by digital design. Much of Pederson’s imagery is sourced from the internet, whether it’s stock photos of pylons (see Sentries) or Chibi-style avatars via Gaia Online (see Blessed Avi). Bead by bead, pixel by pixel, Pederson transforms digital images into tangible tapestries. What emerges is uniquely uncanny, an illusion of pixelated perception beyond the screen. “A lot of my work happens on the computer, but I need things to be physical,” Pederson explains. “I could never purely be on the computer.”
Like Pederson, Koch enjoys the process of realizing digital art in physical space, arguably a form of alchemical transmutation in itself. “I want people to experience more than just a flicker,” he tells me. “I want to feel like an avatar in my own little world.” Initially, this desire was largely driven by feelings of anxiety and isolation. Born and raised in Kazakhstan, Koch moved to Colorado with his mother when he was eight years old. “Instead of growing into it, it was like a straight brick wall of America to the face,” he laughs. “Walmarts, Sonic drive-through and all this shit. I was like, what is happening?!”
Alienated by the onslaught of Americana, Koch sought refuge in a circle of imaginary friends, sketched into reality in a series of comic books. Inspired by gory 90’s video games like Serious Sam and Grand Theft Auto, Koch upped the ante in middle school, using game engines like RPG Maker to build and modify worlds in the virtual realm. 3D printing, Koch feels, is his way of “bringing it all together,” reanimating digital design in three-dimensional space.
Although his work is the product of man and machine, each one of Koch’s pieces is imbued with organic features. “People usually think of highly advanced 3D-rendering technology as being divorced from the warmth and gentleness of domestic arts and crafts,” his artist notes read. “In these pieces, there is an aura of a growing garden.” This unlikely union is honored in the exhibition text, written by Mitch Anzuoni of Inpatient Press: “There’s a great bloom of machinery and moss...meshing together…” Indeed, this “meshing together” can be seen in works like Eternal Pond 002, which features a bed of tufted moss encased in cold, curving ceramic reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp’s legendary Fountain.
In other pieces, Koch’s tribute to organic design is more subtle. The insectile symmetry of Mekhana 001-003 is simultaneously familiar and alien, seemingly poised to copulate with a strange series of circuits. Mekhana 002 appears again on Exo Relic 002, profiled in textured resin that resembles an aging headstone. In this way, Koch reconciles discord between categorically antagonistic entities: nature and technology, softness and severity, the familiar and the foreign.
Pederson, too, confronts duality in her work. Like Koch’s Floral Relic Pond 001, pieces like Blessed Avi contain oppositional elements of delicacy and danger, inviting yet barbed. In Doomed Avi 1, a feminine avatar gleefully displays an armful of shopping bags amidst a dystopian scene of urban sprawl and earthly decay. In Sentries, a 3D model of a koala is flanked by pylons.
“Industrial imagery has always been a peripheral interest, but for this show I really dug into the Industrial Revolution, researching railroad and agriculture equipment,” says Pederson, who cites American photojournalist Walker Evans and German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher as visual influences. In a work like Sentries, these industrial elements take on the sort of formidable beauty usually ascribed to geographical features like mountains or waterfalls. “When you assign character and whimsy to things around you, it's a better life,” Pederson tells me, eschewing the prospect of a future characterized by dystopic doom. “Blood-brain barrier aside…a 5G tower kind of looks cool to me.”
Pederson also explores contradictions within the nature of her chosen medium. In pieces like Family Unit and Roxy, she frames internet-inspired imagery with designs that evoke the ancient art of embroidery.
“Secrets to Graceful Living,” in this way, is largely a collection of anachronisms. Both Pederson and Koch toy with the notion of linear time, alternately signaling the past and future in content and form. Koch’s Exo Relic 001 exemplifies this tension. Although it possesses the sheen of futuristic design, it ultimately resembles a cicada, partially chewed away as if in a state of advanced decay. As a symbol, the cicada is fitting, signaling infinite rebirth and resurrection. “A lot of the work is imbued with symbols of afterlife, death, and synchronicity,” Koch states in his artist notes. “It could be post-human, or it could be pre-human.”
While Koch’s work often alludes to spiritualism and metaphysics, Pederson draws on biblical elements. This influence is most prominent in 200 Lbs of American Born Flesh. Pederson’s human-like tablet (her only bead-free work) displays a sort of existential flow chart, starting with the proposition to “Take Rib From Man” before cycling through plagues of locusts, Luddites, and lawsuits. It’s absurdist humor at its best, featuring hyper-contemporary suggestions like “Review Data Policy” and historic George W. Bush quotes like “Now Watch This Drive.”
In light of the Dimes Square-driven glamorization of Catholicism, Pederson assures me that her biblical references are not the product of recent fascination. “I grew up Lutheran and went to church every week until I was 15,” she says. “I didn’t think about it much growing up, but I’m now realizing just how many references there are in art and culture that would have gone over my head if I didn’t go to bible study.” Eternally-relevant, such references amplify the show’s pervasive atmosphere of being lost in time.
Evoking the ancient practice of alchemy through echoed themes of timelessness, transmutation, and the union of opposites, “Secrets to Graceful Living” transcends cheap shots at technocapitalism. To claim it’s devoid of messaging isn’t accurate either, however. Alyssa Davis has clearly allied herself with the gray area, an infinitely richer well for the future of art.
“Secrets to Graceful Living” is on view at ARTXNYC through February 25.
