mowna x TS - Wild & Newfangled Techspressionism Exhibition 10.3.24 - 1.26.25
The Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art onboards the Techspressionism community to the blockchain Oct 3, 2024 - Jan 26, 2025
New York, NY - Sept 22, 2024 - The Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art (mowna) is excited to announce the museum's 11th exhibition, mowna x TS Wild and Newfangled Techspressionism which will run from Oct 3, 2024 through Jan 26, 2025.
mowna x TS Wild and Newfangled Techspressionism is a collaborative online exhibition and a select NFT drop between the mowna and Techspressionist (TS) communities. This curated show aims to serve mowna's mission to support, empower, and enable artists by exhibiting and paying them, and to introduce Techspressionism to a new audience. Partnering with the Loop Art Critique/Mud Foundation as the hosts of the metaverse side of the exhibition, this online exhibition will be elegantly displayed on the museum's site at mowna.org and available in VR in the metaverse in the mowna Loop room.
"'You're a Techspressionist when you say you are' is the empowering ethos that continually gathers this inclusive community together around their approach of artistically expressing themselves through technology, be it monthly salons, working groups, exhibitions, parties, or meals. Being part of it feels revolutionary," says cari ann shim sham*, co-founder and curator of mowna.
"It's great to see a group of artists come together over the period of several years, continuing to show up for each other and themselves. While some organizations are closing their operations, Techspressionism moves strongly forward, exploring newfangled technologies, processes, and systems to create wild artwork. I look forward to celebrating their important work for years to come," says joey zaza, co-founder and curator for mowna.
The exhibition launches at the Techspressionists' monthly Salon via the mowna Loop room with a round of art talks by the exhibited artists on Oct 3, 2024 at 12pm ET. This show acts as a bridge to the current in person exhibition "Hello Brooklyn!" / Techspressionism at Brooklyn's Kingsborough Art Museum curated by Tommy Mintz, Giovanna Sun, Seungjin Lee, and Oceana Andries and running through September 25th, 2024.
"This collaborative exhibition with mowna presents a unique opportunity to mark this movement's moment in art history on the blockchain and a chance to bring the Techspressionist community together in the metaverse with the help of Loop Art Critique. I look forward to the celebration of diversity, imagination, and inspiration that this show's artists and curators will surely deliver," says Colin Goldberg, who coined the term Techspressionism.
The museum is continuing to build the Web3 space by onboarding the dynamically wild and newfangled Techspressionism community onto the blockchain. Roz Dimon, based in Shelter Island, is a trailblazer in digital art ever since her oil paintings filled with pixels in 1984. A new media pioneer for top corporations at the World Trade Center, her work has been exhibited from Soho to Japan and published in Leonardo, Forbes Magazine, and The New York Times. She has five permanent media installations in New York including a work in the 9/11 Memorial Museum. Her featured work for mowna x TS, THE WORLD'S GREATEST BAR CHART, was created in the mid 1990s. Originally programmed using Macromedia Director, the artist recently rolled this piece up so all may interact with it on the web in perpetuity at https://worldsgreatestbarchart.com.
Vernada Lights, coming to us from South Carolina Low Country's Gullahgeechee Nation, offers us her new work, Jesus Christ: The First Avenger, a groundbreaking collection that reimagines seminal moments in the life of Jesus through a modern, cultural lens. Utilizing a blend of AI (Midjourney) and digital painting techniques, this series challenges traditional religious imagery by presenting Jesus in a manner that reflects historical and cultural accuracy.
Sahar Moussavi, an Iranian/Filipino designer born in Manila in 1980 moved to Iran when she was three. She studied Industrial design at the Art University of Tehran. Passionate about creating digital artwork blending 2d and 3d engines she joined the Techspressionism global movement in 2020 and has participated in several virtual and physical exhibitions. Her work The GREEN SUN is a dance of existence evoking a sense of isolation and resilience, portraying the green-tinted sun, as a silent guardian of the universe, grandeur and mystery.
Malavika Mandal Andrew was one of the founders of the Techspressionism India node. The concept of nodes is important to the international growth of Techspressionism, and artists are invited to start a Techspressionism node in their country. The first TS node was out of the USA in 2020, and the second node was Iran in 2021, founded by Negin Ehtesabian and Sahar Moussavi in collaboration with Patrick Lichty. Through these nodes artists are curating localized exhibitions in their countries, taking the concept of Techspressionism and introducing it to artists around the world in a localized way.
Coming to us from North Bennington, Vermont, founder Colin Goldberg, was born in the Bronx in 1971 to parents of Japanese and Jewish ancestry, both PhD chemists. His grandma Kimiye was an accomplished practitioner and instructor of Japanese Shodo calligraphy. In 2011, he coined the term‚ Techspressionism, and has been active in its development as an artist community since then. He describes his animated featured work with an original soundscape, Organic Gravity, as a poem:
the laboratory
of the rainforest parrot
where the big cat prowls
Lucy Boyd-Wilson is an experiential artist living in San Diego, California. She grew up in England and Canada and studied Computer Science at McGill and Fine Arts at Concordia, both in Montreal. Following a career as a video-game programmer, she is now a solo artist. Her mediums include immersive and interactive technologies such as virtual reality, dome/planetarium display and interactive experiences using Kinect tracking devices. Immersion is an important element of her art and she creates "Worlds in Motion" and places the viewer at the center. Her Earth|Tree|Sky - Orbs are something to be experienced and built specifically for the Loop Art Critique spatial web XR environment.
Lee Musgrave is the recipient of an American National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship with his artwork featured in 21 solo and over 100 group exhibitions. Most of Lee Musgrave's artwork is created by staging bits and pieces of found ephemera on his studio work table, lighting and photographing it, then adjusting and cropping it via computer. He excels at turning each image into an engaging abstract work of art printed on fine art paper, canvas, or metal.
Nina Sobell, is an electronic medium who pioneered video via Brain-Computer Interfaces and Internet performance. Her work is in collections or shown by: Microscope Gallery, Jane England Gallery, DIA, ZKM, ARS, List MIT, Getty, ICA, Whitechapel, the Whitney, LBMA, CAM Houston, Beuys' FIU Doc 6, Louisiana MoMA, Denmark, Kunst Forum, Hammer, Zwirner, Banff, Kramlich, and curated by Goldberg, Lacy, McCarthy, and Viola. Her work Closer In Closer Up is a close up that peers into time and distortion, into movement as a way of lifting off the paint from the canvas and floating it into the air propelling our perception of its mystery into another realm.
Patrick Lichty is a multifaceted artist known for his work in various technological media. Born in Akron, Ohio, in 1962, his career spans over three decades, during which he has established himself as a media artist, writer, curator, designer, and educator. Lichty's artistic practice explores the impact of media and technology on society. He was a CalArts/Herb Alpert Fellow and exhibitor at the Whitney Biennial. His featured work for mowna x TS, Endangered Species, is an in process body of work depicting a post-human world in which all the world's ice has melted. The project uses AI (a significant producer of greenhouse gas) in a self-critique.
mowna welcomes back a crew of artists that include Renata Janiszewska from Lion's Head, on the Northern Bruce Peninsula of Canada. Janiszewska is a trans disciplinary artist who demonstrates how the organic human universe, art history, and the machine realm of technology merge to create a new form. In her works disparate narrative elements are married both to each other, and, when animated, to her original musical scores. Her artwork seeks to articulate themes of chance, Techspressionism, intoxication, shamanism, bio-degradation, and feminism. Her triptych, Metaversal Madonna and the Cybersaints, in the manner of devotional Renaissance works often used as altarpieces, is secularized and atheistic. The portraits of this 'Madonna' and these 'Saints' are both detached and ambivalent towards their phantasmagorical surroundings.
Tommy Mintz is a six time exhibited mowna artist and Associate Professor of Photography at CUNY Kingsborough Community College, from New York City, who grew up in the West Village and currently resides in Chelsea with his wife, two kids, and two cats. He earned an MFA from Queens College in 2005 and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College in 1999 with a concentration in photography and has exhibited in galleries locally, nationally, and internationally. As an urbanist of the Jane Jacobs school of thought, his work seeks to engage in a conversation about how her ideas of what make a vibrant urban landscape are important to consider in this moment of worldwide and neighborhood change which we see clearly in Mintz's work Automated Digital Photo Collage: Crane on 26th St.
The dangerous veil between life and death is where you will find the visual world of artist Violet Bond. Forever edging towards the macabre, Bond seeks the dark places, deep waters where eerie discomfort and exposed truths live side by side. Her work Burn is a haunting self portrait that takes us to the bush and wind of the outback of Australia where Violet lives and creates her work. This is Violet's third exhibition with mowna.
Also returning to mowna from Austin, Texas, is Larry Akers with Wavalator, a digital image generator that creates images based on wave forms and interacting color combinations. Coded entirely in a spreadsheet, the Wavalator is highly parameterized and can incorporate various random factors. Every instance of the spreadsheet formulates a different image. The experience of seeing and feeling the fluidity of water and light is an open gateway between our inner self and the world around us.
Inspired by existing natural environments and carried by the notion of porosity of temporal planes and crossing of geological surfaces, French filmmaker Sandrine Deumier's "From the place where the lights go out" is a dive into intermediate landscapes, neither natural nor artificial, beyond human memories. Deumier is a multidisciplinary artist working in the field of performance, poetry, and video art whose work investigates post-futurist themes through the development of aesthetic forms related to digital imaginaries.
In addition to our collaboration with Techspressionism, we are excited to partner with Loop Art Critique (LAC) as our XR exhibition hub. Inspired by historical salons, Loop fosters in depth conversations between artists, focusing on the art itself rather than the artists' backgrounds. Loop's approach contrasts sharply with the often superficial exchanges on social media, offering a space where meaningful interactions are paramount.
The power of gathering, whether physical or virtual, lies in its ability to foster connections, inspire creativity, and challenge conventions. mowna, Techspressionism, and Loop Art Critique are united in their commitment to these ideals. This exhibition stands as a testament to the dynamic interplay between technology and emotional expression, showcasing a diverse array of artworks that are as unique as the artists behind them.
As Techspressionism celebrates four years of communal gatherings and salon discussions, mowna marks four years of curatorial innovation, and Loop enters their third year of critiques, this exhibition represents a milestone in our shared journey. It is a celebration of creativity, technology, and community, a reflection of what it means to be human in an ever evolving digital landscape.
As with many of mowna's recent exhibitions, the mowna x TS Exhibition brings together both minted and unminted artworks. The exhibition contains artworks minted on the Ethereum, Tezos, and Base blockchains, as well as those that are not minted. Previously minted works for this exhibition date back to 2022, and the museum plans to introduce new artworks to the blockchain with a release on objkt.com. The links for all of the minted artworks can be seen at the exhibition at mowna.org.
Artists:
Adelfino Corino, Adrianne Wortzel, Ahmed Esh, Alan Kinnard, Andrew Reach, Ann R. Shapiro, Annette Weintraub, Béatrice Coron, Benna Gaean Maris, Caro Ramonde, catswilleatyou, cha, Chalda Maloff, Cindy Hawkins, Colin Goldberg, Corina Lipavsky, Cynthia Beth Rubin, Cynthia DiDonato, Deann Stein Hasinoff, Diana de Avila, Dr Kim Hamilton, Farnoosh Doroodgar, FLUOR, Galina Shevchenko, Ira Upin, Javier Aparicio Frago, Jenni Bee, Jody Zellen, Judith Carlin, Judith Jacobs, Karen LaFleur, Kathleen Dobrowsky, Larry Akers, Lee Musgrave, Lee Schnaiberg, Lineadeluz, Lucy Boyd-Wilson, Malavika Mandal Andrew, Max Dalí Kamilla Kulova, Michael Pierre Price, Michael Woodruff, Moritz Albrecht with Sofia Tsantos, Negin Ehtesabian Lichty, Nina Sobell, Patrick Lichty, R. Gopakumar, Reese Schroeder, Renata Janiszewska, Robert A. Ripps, Roz Dimon, Sahar Moussavi, Sandra Pipken, Sandrine Deumier, Sara Radomirovic, Sherry Karver, Skye X, Stefano Contiero, StellarFire, Stephen Paré, Susan Detroy, Tim Cierpiszewski, Tommy Mintz, Treeskulltown, Una Raneta, Verneda Lights, Violet Bond, Xiaobi Iris Pan, xkprx
About TECHSPRESSIONISM
Techspressionism is an artistic approach in which technology is utilized as a means to express emotional experience. It also refers to the international community of artists who self-identify with this approach. The community has an ethos of inclusivity and self-identification and holds monthly Zoom salons that are free and open to the public. The Techspressionist community has a history of successful exhibitions and includes artists ranging from newcomers to digital art to well-established pioneers in the field.
About Loop Art Critique
Loop Art Critique (LAC) merges the concept of gesamtkunstwerk with digital and traditional art critique, inspired by historic salons. It fosters deep, artist-to-artist conversations through a jury-selected process which focuses on art not artist backgrounds. Over four weeks, these discussions lead to a joint curatorial project, contrasting with shallow social media exchanges. LAC promotes privacy and meaningful interaction, reinventing digital art critique in a secure, supportive community space.
About mowna
The Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art provides an international online platform for the most timely, diverse, wild, and newfangled artists in the world. mowna empowers artists by exhibiting their artworks, and paying them, by curating, displaying, and supporting art through the incorporation of innovative technologies. mowna offers the preservation of artworks through an online collection, and commits to providing the public with an accessible space for art from a diverse range of global artists. mowna is a humane and sustainable museum that allows for equity, experimentation, individuality, and authenticity, and seeks to create an ever changing, fun, thoughtful, beautifully designed space to encourage awareness and mindfulness for the highest good of all. The museum was co-founded by cari ann shim sham* and joey zaza in 2020 and is based in New York City.
Members of the museum enjoy benefits such as entry to exhibitions, access to the museum's digital art collection, and other perks. Support for mowna via membership can be found at https://www.mowna.org/members
To experience mowna please visit https://www.mowna.org
The Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art is open to working with press that places the interests of humanity among its priorities.
Images, video, and interviews available upon request.
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