Suzanne Treister "The Magician"
I already covered Suzanne Treister's newest show, "Hexen 2.0" when it was in London last year, but it's finally made its way to NYC, so thought it worth another mention. It opened at PPOW on the 17th, and will be up through Feb 23rd, which makes it a perfectly weird and wonderful retreat from the coldfront we're currently experiencing. Nothing like drawings of conspiracy theories, psychedelica, fringe science, tarot cards, and governmental experimentation to keep you warm.
Suzanne Treister
HEXEN 2.0
January 17 – February 23, 2013
P.P.O.W is pleased to announce the opening of HEXEN 2.0, Suzanne
Treister's second solo exhibition with the gallery. HEXEN 2.0 looks into
histories of scientific research behind government programs of mass
control, investigating parallel histories of countercultural and grass
roots movements. Treister's HEXEN 2.0 charts, within a framework of
post-WWII U.S. governmental and military imperatives, the coming
together of scientific and social sciences through the development of
cybernetics, the history of the internet, the rise of Web 2.0, increased
intelligence gathering and implications for the future of new systems
of societal manipulation towards a control society.
HEXEN 2.0 specifically investigates the participants of the seminal Macy
Conferences (1946-1953), whose primary goal was to set the foundations
for a general science of the workings of the human mind. Treister's
project simultaneously looks at diverse philosophical, literary and
political responses to advances in technology including the claims of
Anarcho-Primitivism and Post Leftism, Theodore Kaczynski/The Unabomber,
Technogaianism and Transhumanism, and traces precursory ideas such as
those of Thoreau, Warren, Heidegger and Adorno in relation to visions of
utopic and dystopic futures from science-fiction literature and film.
The artworks exhibited are based on actual events, people, histories and
scientific projections of the future. They consist of alchemical
diagrams, a Tarot deck, photo-text works, pencil drawings, a video, and
the website HEXEN 2.0, offering a space where one may use the works as a
tool to envision possible alternative futures.
Suzanne Treister studied at St Martin's School of Art, London
(1978-1981) and Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (1981-1982)
and currently lives and works in London. Primarily a painter through the
1980s, Treister was a pioneer in the digital/new media/web based field
from the beginning of the 1990s, developing fictional worlds and
international collaborative organizations. Recent exhibitions and events
include solo and group shows at the Science Museum, London; Schirn
Kunsthalle, Frankfurt;Raven Row, London; Secession, Vienna; Museum of
Contemporary Art (CAPC) Bordeaux; Annely Juda Fine Art, London; and Tate
Britain, London. Treister's work is held in private and public
collections including Tate Britain, EMI Paris, Arts Council of England,
Center for Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu (CoCA), Poland, and AXA
Collection.
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