Jiten Thukral & Sumir Tagra
Arboretum
SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah
July 31 – December 23, 2024
"If a tree falls in the Metaverse, does it make a noise?" Posing this question in their ongoing project Arboretum, artist collaborators JITEN THUKRAL (b. 1976, Jalandhar, Punjab, India) and SUMIR TAGRA (b. 1979, New Delhi, India) contemplate the intersection of the digital and natural worlds. The series was sparked by the global isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent escalation of virtual mediation between people and their physical world. Amassing a collection of digital images of flora in their immediate environment, the artists used select photos as the basis for hyperrealistic paintings on shaped canvases. The resulting works resist the instant gratification of digital technology, favoring hands-on, labor-intensive techniques that require months to complete. By incorporating analog representations of pixels and glitches, the artists remind the viewer of the inescapable intervention of data and algorithms that inform our daily choices and the ways we see and interpret the world.
SCAD MUSEUM OF ART - SCAD MOA
Savannah College of Art and Design
601 Turner Blvd., Savannah, Georgia
