Jennifer Boyd: In Blue Light
SPRING/BREAK Art Show Los Angeles, 2023
Curated by Peter Gynd
The digital age has offered us a giant gulp from the cup of knowledge. This comes, however, at an uncertain cost to the way we communicate and relate to one another. With every advancement in mass communication comes excess, opulence, and an explosion in all forms of creation. This manifests into changes to our ways of thinking and changes in the way we mediate our relationships with the world around us.
In Blue Light presents a key selection of works by Los Angeles based artist Jennifer Boyd that pose questions on digital overconsumption. Boyd’s practice exists at the intersection of art and technology where her sculptural and two-dimensional works explore the daily battlegrounds between digital communication and culture.
In works such as Izzy (2019)—an oil on canvas painting from her Blue Light Portrait series—Boyd references portraiture from the Dutch Golden Age. The dramatic stillness of the composition is lit not by a window or candle as is traditional, but by the blue light emanating from the subject’s device. Blue light, which has quickly become the defining new light of portraiture, is a potentially problematic wavelength of light very closely aligned to ultraviolet light—the long term effects of which remain to be seen.
Self Portrait (2022-23) looks at the hidden digital infrastructure disguised all around us. It is a life-sized sculpture of the artist that takes its inspiration from the facades given to wireless cell towers. These towers can take the form of a fake tree, a fake water tower, a fake cactus and even are disguised as religious crosses. The artist's face and upper bust in this work is removed and placed on the ground in front of the figure. Revealed where the bust was is an open cavity which holds a hidden armature with a vertical video monitor mimicking the shape of a cell tower antenna and displaying footage with scenes from the artist’s daily life.
The altar-like Waiting in Line (2021-2022), a monumental three panel acrylic on canvas work standing six feet high, features large painted images culled from half-loaded social media posts; its semi blurred images seemingly disjointed yet still longing to tell a story.
Featured prominently at the front of the space is Boneyard (2019-23), a rotating sculpture made from encaustic-coated selfie sticks which takes on an air of crutches found at cathedrals; the piles of which are left behind by those who had been cured of their use after a completed pilgrimage.
Perhaps the most bizarre and grotesque works in the exhibition though are Boyd’s series of small hard drive-sized devices which emanate a glowing hue from their flesh-like silicone casings embedded with synthetic hair. The works developed from the artist’s ruminations on transhumanism, a belief that humans can evolve beyond their physical and mental limitations through the merging of self with technology; an idea that only seems to become more relevant as each new media takes hold.
In Blue Light brings these works into conversation with viewers, steeped within an immersive blue room at the SPRING/BREAK Art Show Los Angeles 2023.
SPRING/BREAK Art Show Los Angeles, 2023
Curated by Peter Gynd
The digital age has offered us a giant gulp from the cup of knowledge. This comes, however, at an uncertain cost to the way we communicate and relate to one another. With every advancement in mass communication comes excess, opulence, and an explosion in all forms of creation. This manifests into changes to our ways of thinking and changes in the way we mediate our relationships with the world around us.
In Blue Light presents a key selection of works by Los Angeles based artist Jennifer Boyd that pose questions on digital overconsumption. Boyd’s practice exists at the intersection of art and technology where her sculptural and two-dimensional works explore the daily battlegrounds between digital communication and culture.
In works such as Izzy (2019)—an oil on canvas painting from her Blue Light Portrait series—Boyd references portraiture from the Dutch Golden Age. The dramatic stillness of the composition is lit not by a window or candle as is traditional, but by the blue light emanating from the subject’s device. Blue light, which has quickly become the defining new light of portraiture, is a potentially problematic wavelength of light very closely aligned to ultraviolet light—the long term effects of which remain to be seen.
Self Portrait (2022-23) looks at the hidden digital infrastructure disguised all around us. It is a life-sized sculpture of the artist that takes its inspiration from the facades given to wireless cell towers. These towers can take the form of a fake tree, a fake water tower, a fake cactus and even are disguised as religious crosses. The artist's face and upper bust in this work is removed and placed on the ground in front of the figure. Revealed where the bust was is an open cavity which holds a hidden armature with a vertical video monitor mimicking the shape of a cell tower antenna and displaying footage with scenes from the artist’s daily life.
The altar-like Waiting in Line (2021-2022), a monumental three panel acrylic on canvas work standing six feet high, features large painted images culled from half-loaded social media posts; its semi blurred images seemingly disjointed yet still longing to tell a story.
Featured prominently at the front of the space is Boneyard (2019-23), a rotating sculpture made from encaustic-coated selfie sticks which takes on an air of crutches found at cathedrals; the piles of which are left behind by those who had been cured of their use after a completed pilgrimage.
Perhaps the most bizarre and grotesque works in the exhibition though are Boyd’s series of small hard drive-sized devices which emanate a glowing hue from their flesh-like silicone casings embedded with synthetic hair. The works developed from the artist’s ruminations on transhumanism, a belief that humans can evolve beyond their physical and mental limitations through the merging of self with technology; an idea that only seems to become more relevant as each new media takes hold.
In Blue Light brings these works into conversation with viewers, steeped within an immersive blue room at the SPRING/BREAK Art Show Los Angeles 2023.