bitforms gallery NYC Presents Siebren Versteeg: 'Up The Ghost'

About

bitforms presents Up The Ghost, our third solo exhibition with New York-based artist Siebren Versteeg. Further elucidating a playful interrogation of image and form, subject and object, life and studio, Up The Ghost, introduces interdisciplinary works in sculpture, painting, and photography as an arrangement of digital apparitions that develop continuously throughout the course of the exhibition. Exhibited works in Up The Ghost contend with apprehension and loss, as inspired by developments in the artist’s personal life as well as with the recent public engagements regarding digital ephemera and commodification. Arranged on a single, screen-like plane bisecting a light-sealed gallery space, Versteeg’s exhibition radically “let’s go” of the conventions of artifact exhibition, instead presenting an open ontology of past, present, and hypothetical future works of art.

In a series of varied, new compositions presented both in printed form and on protean screens, the artist places precedence on ultra-high-resolution rendering rather than quickly advancing, evolutionary procedures. “Here,” Versteeg said, “image data is generated at a level of detail that surpasses the limitations of display technology as it currently stands.” Static work from this ongoing body of exploration exhibit agency: aglow from edge-to-edge, they participate as fixed counterpoints to the continuous renderings of nearby screens.