dynamic digital art traverses the physical realm in venus over manhattan’s latest exhibition

February 10, 2023 Abraham Smith

Beyond Digital on Venus over Manhattan

From February 10th to March 14th, 2023, New York-based gallery Venus Over Manhattan presents Beyond Digital, an interdisciplinary art collection founded by blockchain investor and founder of NFT-focused cultural institution Aorist, Pablo Rodríguez-Fraile and the architect and designer Desiree Casoni.

Rodríguez-Fraile and Casoni have spent over a decade building an extensive collection of digital artworks who explore new technologies, while this continued support of digital artists has established them as pioneers and ambassadors in the field. Beyond Digital brings together pioneering artists whose work explores the possibilities of bridging the digital and physical worlds. The exhibition features Refik Anadol, Daniel ArhamBeeple, Dmitri Cherniak, Kjetil Golid, Pak, Trevor Jones, Quayola, Andre ReisingerHelena Sarin, Slime Sunday, Hideki Tsukamoto, Vini Naso, XCOPY.

Refik Anadol, Machine Hallucinations – Mars – Collector’s Edition, 2021, Token (dynamic) | all images courtesy of Venus Over Manhattan (Header: Video Still from Daniel Arsham, Eroding and Reforming Bust of Rome (One Year), 2021)

digital art that traverses the physical realm

Works in Beyond Digital include static and dynamic NFTs displayed on screens, framed prints, and physical objects. The exhibit at Venus Over Manhattan (find more Here) encourages visitors to view digital art less as technology and more as a medium with the potential for dynamic expression that opens up new possibilities for traversing the physical realm.

Andres Reisingers Hydrangea chair, originally created as a digital rendering and later converted into a physical object after the image sparked a viral reaction on social media, is an example of the use of digital art in multiple dimensions. Meanwhile, Refik Anadol’s skillful use of algorithms and exploration of machine intelligence creates powerful illusionary hallucinations that augment and alter our perception of the physical world through data-driven aesthetics.

Beeple, Abundance, 2021, Token (dynamic) and Screen

Other featured artists illustrate how digital mediation can enable new depths and dynamism that analogue production does not offer, such as regulating the temporality of a work. At Daniel Arsham Eroding and reforming the bust of Rome (one year), a bust inspired by an antique piece from the Louvre collection, decays and decays in a courtyard that expresses the changing of the seasons, the cycle constantly renewed every year. As part of his Every day series, Beeples creates a digital image each day to mark the passage of time and change traditional timescales of artistic production.

“Beyond Digital explores the resonances and dissonances evident in the hybridization of art and technology, and embraces the new forms created by such divergences.” explains the exhibit description on the official Venus Over Manhattan website. “Rather than suggesting a transcendence or subsumption of the physical by the digital, these artists use an interplay between the two.”

Slime Sunday x 3LAU, FRGS, 2018, Token