Courtesy of Bitforms Gallery
Featuring the work of ITP Alumna, Addie Wagenknecht
bitforms gallery nyc is pleased to announce Alone Together, Addie Wagenknecht's second solo exhibition with the gallery, which features a new series of paintings rendered in International
Klein Blue pigment. The works speak to the artist’s longtime preoccupation with gendered labor, power structures, and technology.
To create the works in this exhibition, Wagenknecht modified a Roomba to paint on canvas as it enacts algorithms intended to clean. As the Roomba maneuvers around the canvas, Wagenknecht reclines nude. The Roomba relentlessly attempts to navigate around her body because it is designed to continue on a trajectory until the entire area has been mapped by its algorithm. The result is a void in the shape of a female form surrounded by the blue strokes of the robot.
The paintings reference Yves Klein’s Anthropométries in which he directs nude female models, who he referred to as “living paintbrushes,” to press their pigment-covered bodies against canvases in front of an audience. In contrast, Wagenknecht abandons the spectacle of the objectified female nude in favor of drawing attention to what is absent. There is no performance or process documentation on display and the female form is only acknowledged in the negative space of the paintings.