Jonathan Allen “LOADING”
Lu Magnus
This event has ended.
Lu Magnus presents LOADING, a solo exhibition by Jonathan Allen, featuring new paintings, works on paper, and animations. Developed in collaboration with contemporary poet Anselm Berrigan, this new body of work reflects on social, cultural and mundane phenomena arising from our digital era. Berrigan has written 12 new poems that also engage the theme of LOADING, reproduced along with Allen’s artwork in a new book available from Brooklyn Arts Press.
LOADING refers to the ubiquitous message received after clicking on a digital icon and waiting to see what materializes. Repeated and predictable experiences with technology have led us to trust the intangible, digital image and in turn reshaped our expectations surrounding the exchange of ideas.
With each new invention, from the printing press to Google Glass, our expectations for communication swell. Allen incorporates traces of information exchange into his works with written words and coding found in print materials and the interweaving of spoken poetry into his animation. His architecturally inspired images, themselves built in layers, also call to mind the human compulsion to control our surroundings. We amass so much data that we build physical structures to house information — seen in the library of Loading and the server stacks of Pre-listserv. Inherently intangible numbers and letters now shape physical space; works such as Watching and You & your Signals & codes reveal that, in addition to our homes and offices, we now exist in equally real spaces assembled from pixels and code.
LOADING Events
Events held in collaboration with Jonathan Allen’s exhibition include:
+ A September 21st reading and book launch for the book published by Brooklyn Arts Press featuring works by Jonathan Allen and poetry by Anselm Berrigan
+ An exhibition-specific two-night dance performance, September 26th and 27th, conceived by 2013 Bessie Award winning choreographer Joanna Kotze, and featuring Allen and dancers Netta Yerushalmy and Kotze
Media
Schedule
from September 08, 2013 to October 16, 2013
Opening Reception on 2013-09-08 from 18:00 to 21:00