Saw the exhibition A Transcode of the Radical Imaginatory by Julie Mehretu. The works in this exhibition are in a lot of ways a homage to software, specifically PhotoShop. The works look arbitrary and have a shallow visual depth but they are very much a look that is designed around the software. I imagine the works are printed and then worked over. The works come alive with subtle colour that creates contrast.

I was lucky enough to learn PhotoShop when it first came out and my university did electives in it. So I feel a kind of nostalgia for Mehretu’s works in that I know the specific tools to create these aesthetics. In saying that I never would have thought I would see these types of paintings and that these aesthetics would work so well as paintings. When I saw early works by Sean Gladwell at my university he had traditional paintings with Photoshop tools, smudging sections for example.

The actual PhotoShop look was too obvious for most yet it defined the idea of endless manipulability of data and was the foundation for where we find ourselves in the early 21st century. The digital realm is a flawless augmentation of nearly everything we can imagine, even glitches but Mehretu’s work keeps that illusion of a clean appearance going. This is most apparent in the presentation of these works.

There are slight sheen variations and subtle manipulation but they are lost in a photograph. The works need to be seen in person to really understand the subtle variations and the ever so missable human touches. Her drawings though in most part seem far more exploratory and unapologetically hand done. The random way lines and stencilled sections play off each other makes you think that the works have no other purpose than to present the digital as a PhotoShop trope.

If anything the works define the look of the software itself and the idea of creative play within software while becoming a symbol of software in reality. Some works are more obviously hand done and there are a few directions the works go in. This keeps the overall exhibition from falling into being too narrow and specific. The artist isn’t relying too heavily on just the PhotoShop aesthetic but it is one main theme amongst others. Overall the works create a broad field with some play and what can feel like design. 

Design, as a lesson in what PhotoShop can do and what PhotoShop can’t do, in that it creates something that is real and not real. A contradiction that works in a gallery or architectural setting but wouldn’t work anywhere else. I suppose that is the contradiction of the digital age, what is not actually real can become peoples reality and what is real falls into disarray. Maybe that explains Mehretu’s aimless marks and now all of abstractions aimless mark making. 

It is a presentation of disarray within a frame and the most telling part of the exhibition was the architecturally specific frames that reached the ceiling in some works. Still though the frame was there but they were architectural frames for architectural spaces. Another way to present the disordered Photoshop aesthetics with a heroic reach. I sometimes feel art needs to present a lack of boundaries within a tightly curated market. It has to pretend to be free when really there is no freedom in it. It is an illusion of play and an illusion of freedom.