In Chris Kondek’s large format computational works colors, forms, and pixels flow across the image surface creating complex chaotic topographies. The dynamism of these abstractions is marked by juxtapositions: Color fields crash into each other, three-dimensional structural elements clash with flat fluid forms, and the harmony of the whole is constantly in conflict with small pixel level details. These juxtapositions give the images a tactile, painterly quality which still references its obviously digital creation.

Each image starts as a photograph of a simple daily object which is then abstracted through a series of algorithmic re-interpretations. Kondek has created software that samples the colors and forms of the original photograph and translates that information into a field of flows and resistances. In a series of steps the colors and forms migrate across this virtual topography, like lava flowing down a mountainside. A completely new image is created, an abstraction that is intimately and computationally connected with the original. In effect, the original image serves as a map or a field of instructions for its own re-configuration. The final result is a latent image developed out of the information hidden in the original. An image that was always there but needed an algorithm to be seen.

OPENING Thursday, 14 March 2024, 9 p.m.

Runs until 11 April 2024
Open by appointment