21.08.2020
‘A Strange Empathy 1-8 (Left), a series of C-type prints , explores what it means to empathise with a digital creation. The series considers the paradox of the reciprocal exchange of emotion with rendered objects that are part-creature, part-artefact; excavated from a world of pixels. The forms that are presented are inanimate but we feel a life in them nonetheless. Born from within digital maps, without a chain of external source material, these seductive yet enigmatic ‘things’ float in a hallucinatory space.
Happy Liquid, brings movement to these creations. It morphs and evolves in a way that simultaneously evokes light-chasing nights and moments of intimacy. Erotic in its liquidity, fleshy behind the screen. The beat is a marker for the form’s self-consumption.
Glossy Trouble, takes our interaction with the work further. The barriers of empathy are crossed, and we are invited to physically probe the form, the slightest trace of a finger on a trackpad marking its exploration. Artefacts are uncovered; there are spaces between. Here, the line is marked between our empathy and our assimilation.’’
Text by Tess Charnley.
Each print is available from Block 336 website, in an edition of 10 (with 3 artist’s proofs) at £200 each.
The work by London based artist Robert Bell, is a result of a Block 336 commission as part of their online exhibitions programme during the first lockdown of 2020.