NYAB Event - Andrea Crespo “Virocrypsis”

Andrea Crespo “Virocrypsis”

Swiss Institute Contemporary Art

This event has ended.

Swiss Institute presents the first institutional solo exhibition in the United States of New York-based artist Andrea Crespo, centered on a new video, virocrypsis (2015), which develops the artist’s ongoing inquiry into posthuman desire.

Crespo is attentive to the way that communities have formed on sites where desire can be seen to take various forms, in the shape of characters, avatars and other types of vessels. In this vein, conjoined characters named Cynthia and Celinde appear in several of the artist’s works and virocrypsis features a splintered dialogue between their two voices. A sense of mutating desire and energy is captured by splattering liquid, bioprinters producing new fruits and singing five-headed Vocaloid(s), as well as stuttering punctuation that suggests an intense energy spinning in place: cooling, buffering and loading.

Previously, Crespo has used images of similar characters found in online image sharing communities such as DeviantArt, but here Crespo has made digital tablet paintings of Cynthia and Celinde for the first time. While they have recognizable vernacular characteristics common to communities of fandom, they also depart from this style. In both the video and a new series of fabric prints, it seems possible the characters exist solely for each other, as though they might have drawn themselves.

Andrea Crespo: virocrypsis is the fourth exhibition in the ONE FOR ALL series at SI. Building on Swiss Institute’s long history of providing a platform for emerging artists, each show will be the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition in the United States with a newly commissioned body of work specifically created for the exhibition space. Swiss Institute is grateful for support from the VIA Art Fund, Presenting Sponsor of the ONE FOR ALL series.