ULTRACONCENTRATED · Casey Reas

bitforms gallery is pleased to announce the US debut of new work by the Los Angeles based artist Casey Reas. ULTRACONCENTRATED is his first New York solo exhibition in over five years, marking a departure from past works based on emergent systems. Since 2008, Reas has collaborated on a number of architecturally-scaled commissions including stage set design for Yeasayer with ArandaLasch, a permanent video projection for Frank Gehry's New World Symphony building in Miami Beach with Tal Rosner, a mural with Ben Fry at MIT, and "Clad" sculptures at the 12th Venice Architecture biennial. Reas' latest work inhabits the increasingly voluminous, yet invisible, spaces of information systems and mass communication. Using a variety of materials, his new projects explore the behavior of television signals and entropy. Live video-driven software systems are featured, as well as c-prints, laser-etched anodized aluminum pieces, and an illuminated sculpture created with ArandaLasch. The series Signal to Noise intentionally disrupts the information of local broadcast signals, investigating "the field of technical images, as theorized by philosopher Villem Flusser." Television content was captured from the air with an antenna, edited, and processed with custom software running live in the gallery. Each generative animation scrambles a 20-minute television segment from major US networks (ABC, NBC, Fox, CBS), fracturing and distorting intended images and narratives. Construction parallels early twentieth-century collages and mid-century video collage, employing a Dada approach.

Works