Opening Reception: Friday, July 19 | 5:00 - 7:00 PM
On View: July 19 - 26
In his famed 1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin explained, “what withers in the age of the technological reproducibility of the work of art is the latter’s aura.” Benjamin warned that the decay of aura – the destruction of distance and duration (the unique geographic location / situated temporality of perception and the disruption of traditional handicraft modes of production) – were being exploited by European Fascism and Western capitalist democracy in film and advertisement. With the contemporary return to overt fascist politics the world over, the artists in Digital Aura consider how the internet’s aura – it’s ability to bring images closer to us while destroying their uniqueness / historical context -- has augmented collective perception and notions of truth. These formal inquiries are situated by poetic and political concerns: gentrification, climate change, nuclear war, computational control, settler-colonialist legacies, and the nature of the real.
Digital Aura is an exhibition featuring work of current Undergraduate and Low-Residency MFA students. Artists include: Bezalel Banks, Lisa Croner, Samuel De Lemos, Imani Maryahm Harrington, Zoe Mendez, Jonathan Naisteter, Wade Schuster and Helena Wong.
Image: Helena Wong, IN GOD(zilla) WE TRUST, 2019; Oil on canvas, 36 x 44 inches.
