Art and alchemy meet in equal measure for Casey Reas’ first solo exhibition with Unit, Wet and Saturated Process. Featuring a variety of media, spanning generative software to a number of highly-technical prints produced in collaboration with Erika Weitz, the exhibition reveals novel approaches to understanding the intricacies of both the natural and synthetic worlds.
The exhibition invites viewers to consider how machine-learning, much like photography, has the potential to recalibrate our relationship with reality. Understood through Vilém Flusser’s notion of the “technical image”, explored in Towards a Philosophy of Photography, Reas follows a tradition of artists working with technology to expand upon the repertoire of forms found in nature. Rather than neutral representations, Flusser contends that “technical images” are shaped by the mechanics of the devices used to construct them. Each artwork in Reas’ exhibition derives from a machine-learning model trained on scans of organic plant material, developing our understanding of the natural world by offering a “technical image” for our data-driven age.
This idea can be observed most clearly in Reas’ Technical Images. Working with Erika Weitz, an expert in 19th-century wet-plate collodion photography, Reas transforms his machine-learned images into analogue, tactile abstractions. Invented in 1851, wet-plate collodion photography involves coating a metal plate with photosensitive solutions before inserting it into a camera and exposing the plate to light. Directing the camera at his digital images, meticulously detailed monochromatic impressions materialised on the plates. Set against velvet backed frames, these 4 x 5” richly textured works embody Flusser’s notion of the “technical image”: a depiction of reality complicated across a range of systems, bridging our material and immaterial worlds through automation and handmade creation.
Wet and Saturated Process press release
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