"The large tableaux in this exhibition serve to capture something of the paradigm shift in scopic regimes* in the information age."
Statement
The
large tableaux in this exhibition serve to capture something of the paradigm
shift in scopic regimes* in the information age. It is a continuation of a body
of work that was commenced in 2011 with Riley’s exhibition Screen Graphics at the Canberra Contemporary Artspace. However,
where previous work dealt
specifically with the application of foundational grid theory to the incorporeal
experience of interfacing web design, the current work extends this to include
interactive gaming screens which have evolved a hybrid scopic regime utilizing
the grid with an overlay of Cartesian perspectivalism, specifically the
one-point perspective familiar to us through Italian Renaissance paining. The underlying
network of columns, rows and gutters direct the audience to read and respond in
a methodical way whilst the mono-occularism of the vanishing point posits the
subject, paradoxically, as alone and at the centre of the interactive
multi-‘player’ digital experience. It seems to say “You are alone, and we are
with you”. Affirmations, scores and ‘likes’ provide the subject with positive psychological
strokes that, when coupled with highly saturated pop-cultural aesthetics,
engage him or her in a visceral experience of enjoyment and satisfaction.
*Note: The notion that a scopic regime is an overarching experience of the
gaze, as enacted on an entire culture, was first introduced by the film critic
Christian Metz in The Scopic Regimes of
Modernity reproduced in Vision and
Visuality, edited by Hal Foster (Bay Press, 1988).
Bio
Rob Riley holds a Master Art degree from the University of New South Wales School of Art & Design as well as a Bachelor of Arts and a Diploma of Education. He works both individually and collaboratively in drawing, painting, photomedia, film/video/animation/sound and new media, seeking to find possibilities in the merging of traditional artforms with new and emerging forms. After a fourteen-year stint in the national capital he returned to Sydney in 2014. This is his fourteenth solo exhibition; and his third at Gaffa in as many years.
Statement
The
large tableaux in this exhibition serve to capture something of the paradigm
shift in scopic regimes* in the information age. It is a continuation of a body
of work that was commenced in 2011 with Riley’s exhibition Screen Graphics at the Canberra Contemporary Artspace. However,
where previous work dealt
specifically with the application of foundational grid theory to the incorporeal
experience of interfacing web design, the current work extends this to include
interactive gaming screens which have evolved a hybrid scopic regime utilizing
the grid with an overlay of Cartesian perspectivalism, specifically the
one-point perspective familiar to us through Italian Renaissance paining. The underlying
network of columns, rows and gutters direct the audience to read and respond in
a methodical way whilst the mono-occularism of the vanishing point posits the
subject, paradoxically, as alone and at the centre of the interactive
multi-‘player’ digital experience. It seems to say “You are alone, and we are
with you”. Affirmations, scores and ‘likes’ provide the subject with positive psychological
strokes that, when coupled with highly saturated pop-cultural aesthetics,
engage him or her in a visceral experience of enjoyment and satisfaction.
*Note: The notion that a scopic regime is an overarching experience of the
gaze, as enacted on an entire culture, was first introduced by the film critic
Christian Metz in The Scopic Regimes of
Modernity reproduced in Vision and
Visuality, edited by Hal Foster (Bay Press, 1988).
Bio
Rob Riley holds a Master Art degree from the University of New South Wales School of Art & Design as well as a Bachelor of Arts and a Diploma of Education. He works both individually and collaboratively in drawing, painting, photomedia, film/video/animation/sound and new media, seeking to find possibilities in the merging of traditional artforms with new and emerging forms. After a fourteen-year stint in the national capital he returned to Sydney in 2014. This is his fourteenth solo exhibition; and his third at Gaffa in as many years.
