Siebren Versteeg: Daily Times, Dorfman Projects, NYC

Siebren Versteeg: Daily Times
Dorfman Projects, New York
October 2012 - March 2013

Dorfman Projects presents Daily Times, by Siebren Versteeg. The project, on exhibition from October 2012 through March 2013, features Daily Times (Performer), a real-time, Internet enabled, digital program and new digital works on paper.

Each morning, in tandem with NYTimes.com's daily update, a scan of the printed front page of the day's newspaper automatically downloads to a free standing 70" LCD monitor. Siebren Versteeg's algorithmic program immediately gets to work; continuously generating a painterly abstraction that is forever in progress. Strokes are placed slowly, picking up on the particularities of color and composition of the day's given layout, while simultaneously displaying a nearly endless variety of color, density, and breadth. As digital paint builds up and drips down the page, its layering effects obstruct and obliterate their newsroom source, transforming a morning's cursory glance into an evening's aesthetic event.

Daily Times illustrates Siebren Versteeg's continuing interest in the circulation of information in the digital realm and the algorithms that guide its flow. By tapping into and manipulating live information sources he creates artworks that philosophically engage our notions of agency, choice, and chance; looking critically at the systems used for the dissemination of images within our culture, as well as with the malleable technological possibilities implicit in their construction.

The exhibition includes a selection from Siebren Versteeg's Good Times series, a body of abstract compositions digitally generated at resolutions of over 100 megapixels. These works, again results of Siebren Versteeg's complex painting algorithms, are output to monumental scales (89 ½ x 55") through meticulous piecing together of many smaller inkjet prints. Unlike the Daily Times project, these prints capture and immortalize the artist's hand in one infinitesimal moment in time. The juxtaposition of these unique works on paper, with Daily Times (Performer) creates a dialogue that immediately calls into question concepts of infinity, time, and fate versus free will.

SIEBREN VERSTEEG, born in 1971, lives and works in New York. His work is in the collections of numerous well-known collectors, nationally and internationally, as well as in the permanent collections of The Guggenheim, NYC; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; MCA, Chicago, IL; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; and Yale Art Gallery, New Haven, CT. November, 2012 Versteeg will participate in "New, New York" at ESSL Museum in Vienna, Austria.

DORFMAN PROJECTS
529 West 20th Street #7E, New York, NY 10011
www.dorfmanprojects.com

Sol LeWitt: The Complex Form, Dorfman Projects, NYC

Sol LeWitt: The Complex Form
Dorfman Projects, New York
September 15 – October 30, 2010 

Dorfman Projects presents Sol LeWitt: The Complex Form, a focus exhibition exploring Sol LeWitt's study of the complex form through works on paper, ephemera and sculpture, with a spotlight on his 1988 monumental work in metal, Complex Form #6.

Although Sol LeWitt is typically regarded as both a minimalist and a conceptual artist, this period of work, which ranged from the mid 80's to early 90's, represents a zenith in his exploration of geometry and a step away from the minimal. Aptly named, the complex forms incorporate more complicated shapes, non-right angles, and compositions defined by juxtaposition rather than systematic organization.

From the start of his career, Sol LeWitt followed his fascination with the cube, using it as unit, medium, and subject for many of his most iconic works. Over time however, Sol LeWitt opened up to different types of building blocks for his constructions. Beginning with elemental forms such as the triangle and pyramid, Sol LeWitt's compositional play led him to include more irregular shapes such as parallelograms and quadrilaterals. In the most mature examples of this extensive body of work, which includes drawing, sculpture, prints, and monumental wall drawings, Sol LeWitt developed complex arrangements that contain a diversity of geometric forms within a single piece.

Though Sol LeWitt had by no means exhausted the cube completely—he continued to work with it until the end of his life—the complex form period remains one of the most intriguing and least studied phases of his career. The sculpture on view, Complex Form #6, is in many ways the finest and most evolved example of a complex form. Through the dynamic addition and subtraction of shapes, this large-scale work makes an exhaustive study of angles that change constantly in relation to the viewer's position around it. Unlike earlier work that meticulously adhered to systems and order, these complex pieces personify quiet and studied rebellion. With supporting prints, sculpture, and ephemera, this exhibition illustrates the evolution of LeWitt's process and his arrival at this culminating masterpiece.

SOL LEWITT was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1928 and died in New York City in 2007. His work has been exhibited extensively worldwide. To name only a few examples, in 2000, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art hosted a major retrospective (which travelled to the Museum of Modern Art, Chicago and the Whitney); in 2006 Dia: Beacon hosted a large scale exhibition of wall drawings called Drawing Series...; and in 2008, the Yale University Art Gallery, Mass MoCA, and the Williams College Museum of Art collaborated to present Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective, which will remain at Mass MoCA for the next 25 years.

DORFMAN PROJECTS
529 West 20th Street #7E, New York, NY 10011
www.dorfmanprojects.com

Updated 06.07.2019