It is hard to envisage the striking combination of unfeeling machines used as a medium to create artwork filled with emotion and passion. Astounding as it is, the UCCA recently held an exhibition in Beijing named Immaterial/Re-material: A Brief History of Computing Art.
Paying tribute to Les Immatériaux, an exhibition in 1985, the exhibition is framed as four sections, which gesture towards the evolution of computer art from the 1960s to the present. Viewers are invited to travel through the sections in sequence, exploring possibilities of computer art and underlined aesthetics, witnessing the process of re-materialization – until they arrive at the final destination of post-digital art.
However, there are some missed opportunities for presenting the same technique of computer art making within one section. One example would be the collection of all screen presentations. It is a highly purposeful show but doesn’t allow for space between pieces in several sections, which is crucial for a public event especially during a pandemic. In general, the 798-art gallery is dotted with works credited to 29 artists.
The exhibit’s most thrilling work of art would be Floating Bodies by Leo Villareal. Floating Bodies is a composition that is rhythmic in the variation of light. When I first set eyes on this captivating piece of art, the screen was demonstrating a figure that is very similar to the shape of an eye. Although the subject matter may not be so literal, but the pupils, whites of the eyes, etc. were vividly represented on the large screen by varying intensities of light. The huge eye immediately reminded me of Magritte’s The False Mirror. Realizing the resemblance to a canonical theme of the past masterpieces nonetheless gives me a slight wallop. These two works are all dominated by a colossal eye within the entire frame, but what makes them different is that Magritte is transmitting the significance of his idea with artwork being the medium. In contrast, Villareal’s work is firmly and purposefully rooted in abstraction; it is open-ended, which encourages the audience to interpret the ever-changing pattern with their own imagination. With the aid of new art media, the artist successfully makes the medium of the artwork the predominant focus in general.
After the exhibition, I was consumed and enthralled by the question of how we should define computer art. Why isn’t a novel written on a computer not regarded as artwork? The exhibition reveals this notion progressively and imperceptibly. Staged in Beijing, where digital technology is embedded into daily life, and presented in a time when social quarantine accentuates the importance of electronic devices for communication, the exhibit displays the response of various artists to the unprecedented digital-based world.