ABOUT THE SHOW
Today we find ourselves surrounded by data, meta-data, information, references, keys, passwords, hyperlinks, applets, status bars, transactions, and other digital ephemera. While these tools can provide a bona fide relief this data is often an annoying companion that we are forced to live with daily. A digital fog, sometimes navigable, sometimes tiresomely perplexing has descended on our lives.
Physical Digital features sculptures and works on paper by Rachel Gargiulo, Ted Ollier, John Pyper, and Liz Shepherd, each of whom explores unique aspects of the structure and configurations inherent in living digitally.
Gargiulo's "Chronicle I: The Pretenders" details her side of a collaborative project where she produced a simulated love affair on the internet. The online correspondence prior to their initial face to face meeting is documented here. The consequences of this emotional simulation are not yet evident.
Ollier scrutinizes the information for which we have developed blind-spots -- the barcode, the scaleless map, the depiction of compression, the languages that run our computers, and unintentional digital artifacts. His meticulously accurate depictions create abstract forms that force us to reconsider what we thought we already knew.
Pyper explores the fiction, appearance, and ephemera found in the backgrounds of home video game console games. His objects and prints allow us to approach objects sought after and navigated through for countless hours in a new and material way.
Shepherd has developed a visual vocabulary by digitally drawing with discarded everyday illustrations. Her hushed totems of travelers made from architectural drawings and her depictions of hopeless characters acting out dangerous activities derives from digital manipulations and contextualized images.
ARTISTS
Rachel Gargiulo
Ted Ollier
John Pyper
Liz Shepherd
ARTIST STATEMENTS
Rachel Gargiulo
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Rachel Gargiulo received a BFA from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She has curated work for Grub Street Gallery, Boston, MA and the William Morris Hunt Memorial Library of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Recent exhibitions include "Chronicle I: the Pretenders," John David Mooney Foundation, Chicago, IL, "Singularities," Roxbury Community College, Roxbury, MA, "Ablaze in the Northern Sky," Florida Southern College, Lakeland, FL, and "Simply the Best," Museum of Fine Arts Courtyard Gallery, Boston, MA.
She is a Boston-based artist and currently working on a project at the Gibson House Museum.
Ted Ollier
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Ted Ollier has been a photographer, graphic designer, bass player, typographer, web pioneer and armchair philosopher. He has also worked a variety of day-jobs, the details of which are not terribly important. At present, he is a printmaker and installation artist with an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art.
His first taste of printmaking came at the age of 8 when he produced styrofoam relief prints on self-made paper in an art class at a local museum. Twenty years later, during his second undergraduate degree, he rediscovered the process and began making woodcuts, intaglio etchings and shaped copper relief prints. He has been working as an independent artist since 2004.
His concerns are with shapes and forms covered up by overfamiliarity and convention. He pulls these shapes and presents them in stark contrast. He uses technical means to extract unfamiliar information. He adapts industrial techniques to artistic ends.
Recently, he moved across the continent to reside in Somerville, a close neighborhood of Boston. His frequent companions are Bettina (a molecular biologist) and Raster (a flame-point Siamese).
John Pyper
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John Pyper is an artist living in Arlington MA. He received his BFA from SMFA/Tufts. His work records ephemera- the harmonious moments found in the noise of the world. His current favorite ephemeral topics are the backgrounds of video games, trucks on the highway, and empty sport fields.
Recent shows include Monumental Idea, Miniature Book (mimb.org for locations), Rerun: The Relation Between a Symbol and a Symptom at the MFA Boston, and Identification Please at Columbia College, Chicago.
He has curated three portfolios for the Southern Graphics Council, Singularities at Roxbury Community College, and Salad Days, a portfolio of contemporary letterpress.
His work is in the collections of Boston Public Library, Print and Photography Department, Virginia Commonwealth University, Kansas City Art Institute, Columbia College, the Southern Graphics Print Collection, and in private collections.
Liz Shepherd
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Liz Shepherd’s prints merge computer generated imagery and traditional printmaking techniques producing darkly uncanny and witty images. While natural disaster was one motivation for the flying chairs and piles of objects, these images also call to mind lives that have been disrupted by events as large as war or as intimate as the upheaval that accompanies tragic illness.
She graduated with a MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University where she twice won the Boit Award. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Edinburgh (Scotland) College of Art, Syracuse University, the collections of Percussion Software and Cell Signaling Technologies as well as numerous private collections.
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