Digital as Manual

About Digital as Manual

These works are made by hand but look as though they came out of a screen: stair-stepped pixels, smooth software gradients, drop shadows, cursor arrows or wireframe models rendered in paint, thread, wood or ink. They turn instant, weightless images into laborious physical things.

The idea has deep roots, since mosaic and cross-stitch always built pictures from units on a grid. In the 1990s Albert Oehlen began combining crude computer drawings with oil paint, and Laura Owens later mixed painterly marks with enlarged digital brushstrokes and drop shadows. Devorah Sperber arranges thousands of spools of thread into low-resolution versions of famous paintings, which snap into focus when seen through a clear viewing sphere. Arno Beck translates pixel graphics into typewriter drawings and woodcuts, and Mathew Zefeldt paints imagery drawn from video games and 3D rendering. Look for brushwork or grain beneath the apparently digital surface.