How do we read the sky today?
Cloud Cover investigates how media shapes the way we comprehend our physical surroundings. Increasingly, we rely on flows of information filtered through screens to make decisions, interact with one another, and view the world. The contemporary screen is a communication device and a material surface, an interface that invites different modes of reading and looking. We constantly look at and through these interfaces to situate ourselves in space. This exhibition considers the materiality of digital and non-digital screens, as well as their historical precursors. By engaging the screen as a structure among other structures, the artists explore the mediating processes that occur both within and beyond the frame.
Liam Gillick, Marina Pinsky, and Rachel Rose explore the ways we take in, respond to, and present information by relating current modes of communication to the history of architecture, film, photography, and painting. A 19th century landscape painting by George Inness challenges the tendency to compare screens to transparent windows. The artists advocate for the space to critically apprehend complex relationships between inside and outside, normative states and disaster, destruction and construction, human and non-human.
The works in Cloud Cover examine spaces designed for contemplation and discourse, such as the studio, the gallery space, and the glass house. Events unfold behind solid and translucent surfaces, such as screens and windows, allowing only partial or distracted views. Through layered imagery and composite forms, the works convey a feeling of estrangement while inviting the viewer into almost uncanny confrontations with the surrounding environment.
