'You open [Photoshop] up and there’s this paint bucket. If you click and hold it you get the gradient tool. Then you click up here and get to pick these different options. You drag it and it goes like this!' —Cory Arcangel
Presenting a kaleidoscope of colours radiating from a single point, Photoshop CS: 110 by 72 inches, 300DPI, RGB, square pixels, default gradient "Spectrum", mousedown y=9900 x=3450, mouseup y=990 x=21450 is an invigorating example of Cory Arcangel’s Photoshop Gradient Demonstrations, commenced in 2007. In the series, Arcangel created each composition using the graphics editor Adobe Photoshop, before materialising them as monumental c-prints, and titling them after the exact coordinates of their gridded source’s x- and y- axes. Signifying the importance of the present work in Arcangel’s oeuvre, eight examples from the artist’s Photoshop Gradient Demonstrations were exhibited on the occasion of his breakthrough survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 2011— an event that epitomised his growing success, and hailed him the youngest artist since Bruce Nauman to be bestowed a full-floor solo show within the institution. Heralding a new epoch of innovation and technical prowess, Arcangel’s Photoshop Gradient Demonstrations are notably redolent of Albert Oehlen’s similar artistic intention developed with his Computer Paintings of the 1990s, begun following the purchase of his first laptop computer.
Albert Oehlen, Tidying Up, 1998, inkjet ink, oil, acrylic and enamel on canvas, Private Collection. Image: Scala, Florence.
Technology as Material
'All of a sudden millions of people were expressing themselves through a computer. I feel it’s the most interesting thing to happen in like 20 years. Although my works can end up on walls, and physical, like sculptures, it often comes from me sitting where I like to be – at my computer.' — Cory Arcangel
Claiming that his computer is where he ‘feels at home’, Arcangel began delving into his formal investigation of technology when he was a student in classical guitar and music technology at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio in the late 1990s. There, he started reworking old computer systems from the 1970s and 1980s, crystalising their contemporary state before reaching potential obsolescence. He deepened this thematic exploration when he began using Photoshop and other computer software as creative tools, conjuring familiar yet entirely new aesthetics based on technological sources. ‘I wait for culture to swim by me, and then I snap it up’, he said.1 The present work perfectly captures this stylistic shift; it represents a key example of his Photoshop Gradient Demonstrations, where the impetuosity of the creative act meets the finite nature of the readymade. A contemporary take on the Colour Field artists’ investigation into colour, Photoshop CS: 110 by 72 inches, 300DPI, RGB, square pixels, default gradient "Spectrum", mousedown y=9900 x=3450, mouseup y=990 x=21450 feels like a mechanised form of Morris Louis’ vibrant stain paintings — a deeply relevant study of the intersection between technology and fine art.