Cultural Matter: Petra Cortright

Petra Cortright’s online artwork VVEBCAM  is the work in focus for the last exhibition of LIMA’s Cultural Matter programme. VVEBCAM came out in 2007 marking the beginning of the massive online culture of selfies and influencers. The artist is seen looking at the screen absently clicking through banks of standard effects, which frame her face. The work has an eerie introversion, when looking back from the position of the massive abundance of self-presentation the net has to offer now. The work predicts this phenomenon, but from today’s perspective also seem to comment on it. Self presentation has a long history, and one can’t refrain to relate the work to video artists like Pipilotti Rist and the photos of Cindy Sherman, but most of all, VVEBCAM is soaked in the medium-specificity of the net.

Cultural Matter

Cultural Matter is a series of exhibitions and events that provides a platform for the international discussion of digital art and aims to develop new strategies for the presentation and preservation of these artworks.
 

Participating artists: Nicholas O’Brien, Petra Cortright, Harm van den Dorpel, Constant Dullaart, Olia Lialina, UBERMORGEN.

Curated by: Sanneke Huisman and Jan Robert Leegte.
 

About the Artist
Petra Cortright’s (1986) core practice is the creation and distribution of digital and physical images using consumer or corporate softwares. She became renowned for making self-portrait videos that use her computer’s webcam and default effects tools, which she would then upload to YouTube and caption with spam text. Cortright’s paintings on aluminum, linen, paper, or acrylic are created in Photoshop using painting software and appropriated images, icons, and marks. The digital files are endlessly modifiable, but at a “decisive moment” they are translated into two-dimensional objects. They become finite, yet their range of motifs and marks, and their disorienting perspectives and dimensions suggest dynamic change. Cortright lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Events
Opening event with Bas Hendrikx & Barbara Cueto
Wednesday, September 12, 8.30 pm
7,50 / 5 / free with Cineville

Petra Cortright in conversation with Melanie Bühler
Wednesday, October 10, 8.30 pm
7,50 / 5 / free with Cineville

Exhibition
September 12 - October 24, 2018
Every day 5 - 11 pm
LIMA (in the basement of LAB111)
Entrance is free
For more information, see www.li-ma.nl/site/cm

#LIMAculturalmatter
 

This programme is supported by the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, the Democracy & Media Foundation, AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts) and the Mondriaan Fund.