On Screen / Off Screen:

Contemporary Panting and Technology

Kate Petley - Lorraine Tady - Liz Trosper

Orth Contemporary is pleased to present On Screen / Off Screen: Contemporary Painting and Technology, an exhibition in abstraction by artists Kate Petley (CO), Lorraine Tady (TX), and Liz Trosper (TX). Each of the artists' process-oriented practices integrate digital means to explore ways of thinking about, seeing, and occupying space. The resulting work is imaginative, challenging, and, perhaps counterintuitively, organic. Petley's works collapse barriers between sculpture, painting, and photography while Tady's canvasses obfuscate what is done physically by hand and what is done digitally on the computer. Trosper combines assemblage, sculpture, photography, and painting, presenting works referencing our prolific, luminous, back-lit screens.

As who we are in physical space increasingly becomes (or perhaps already is) who we are in digital realms, how we make and/or look at art exists in both places, too. Petley, Tady, and Trosper, synthesize the binary condition of digital versus real-world space. They play with it, flatten it, and deepen it through intuitive use of traditional, tactile materials and digital tools, suggesting the interconnectedness of these worlds and the expansiveness of possibility between the two. The digital becomes a place to inquire within, push on, play with, and think about. Just as the digital is a prosthetic of our real selves, impacting our real-world life, it is sometimes impossible to tell what's what—digital or material—in their work. These works challenge perception and boundaries in an era increasingly influenced by narrow, black-and-white thinking.

Text by Liz Blood (2020)