ART and Entertainment plus technology proves a potent mix in
Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools
through September 11, 2011
at
The Whitney in New York
Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools, an exhibition of new work, revolves around the concept of “product demonstrations.” All of the works featured in the exhibition—ranging from video games, single channel video, kinetic sculpture, and prints, to pen plotter drawings—have been created by means of technological tools with an emphasis on the mixing and matching of both professional and amateur technologies, as well as the vernaculars these technologies encourage within culture at large. The centerpiece of the exhibition, Various Self Playing Bowling Games (2011), is a bowling alley consisting of large-scale projections of bowling games from the late 1970s to the 2000s, each hacked by the artist to throw only gutter balls. Projected in chronological order these games are a history of both video game bowling and of graphic representation in the digital medium, from pixellated abstraction to realism. The exhibition also includes works from the series Photoshop Gradient Demonstrations, consisting of unique prints showing fades between colors that have been created by using the popular image processing software Photoshop’s standard gradient tool. Another series featured in the show is CNC Wireform Demonstrations, wire sculptures randomly generated from software the artist has written and then produced by state-of-the-art industrial computer numerical control (CNC) wire-forming equipment.
Cory Arcangel’s work crosses a range of media, including computer-generated projects, performance, video, installation, music composition, sculpture, and print media. Arcangel (b. 1978) is best known for his Internet interventions, and modified video games. He has recently shown work in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, as well as in the Whitney exhibition Synthetic.
As the preeminent institution devoted to the art of the United States, the Whitney Museum of American Art presents the full range of twentieth-century and contemporary American art, with a special focus on works by living artists. The Whitney is dedicated to collecting, preserving, interpreting, and exhibiting American art, and its collection—arguably the finest holding of twentieth-century American art in the world—is the Museum’s key resource. The Museum’s signature exhibition, the Biennial, is the country’s leading survey of the most recent developments in American art.
Innovation has been a hallmark of the Whitney since its beginnings. It was the first
museum dedicated to the work of living American artists and the first New York museum to
present a major exhibition of a video artist (Nam June Paik in 1982). Such figures as
Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, and Cindy Sherman were given their first museum retrospectives
by the Whitney. The Museum has consistently purchased works within the year they were
created, often well before the artists became broadly recognized. The Whitney was the
first museum to take its exhibitions and programming beyond its walls by establishing
corporate-funded branch facilities, and the first museum to undertake a program of
collection-sharing (with the San Jose Museum of Art) in order to increase access to its
renowned collection.
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street
New York, NY 10021
General Information: +1 (212) 570-3600
How to get here:
Subway: 6 Train to 77th Street
Bus: M1, M2, M3, M4 to 74th Street
Car: There are several parking garages nearby the Museum.
General admission: $18
Ages 19–25: $12
Ages 62 and over: $12
Full-time students: $12
Ages 18 and under: FREE
Members: FREE
Admission is pay-what-you-wish on Fridays, 6–9 pm
Tickets include admission to all current exhibitions.
MONDAY CLOSED
TUESDAY CLOSED
WEDNESDAY 11 am–6 pm
THURSDAY 11 am–6 pm
FRIDAY 1 pm–9 pm
SATURDAY 11 am–6 pm
SUNDAY 11 am–6 pm
editor, July 2011
and 
Ernest Borgnine.
