C.E.B. REAS
new animated software installations and prints
SUZUNG KIM
recent prints and software
December 15, 2006 – January 18, 2007
bitforms gallery, seoul

bitforms gallery is pleased to announce a two person exhibition with C.E.B. Reas (b. 1972, United States) and Suzung Kim (b. 1967, Korea). This exhibit marks the debut of three new animated software installations and eleven unique prints by C.E.B. Reas. Also eight recent prints and a software piece by Suzung Kim will be on view, which utilize Reas’ open source Processing software. An opening reception with both artists will take place Friday December 15 from 6 to 8 pm in the gallery.

New work from C.E.B. Reas’ ongoing Process series explores the dialectical relationship between naturally evolved systems and those that are engineered and synthetic. The imagery evokes transformation, and visualizes systems in motion and at rest. Equally embracing the qualitative nature of human perception and the quantitative rules that define digital culture, organic form emerges from precise mechanical structures.

Using software as a generative tool, Process 12 constructs dense visual systems of activity, reminiscent of organic and crystalline surface textures. Process 11 operates similarly as a fluid system and utilizes a warm color palette. The C prints in this exhibit from the Process 8, 9, 11, and 12 structures, portraying dense tangled form, serve as static representations of the systems activated in Reas’ custom software structures.

At the center of the gallery space, Process 9 (Interaction 1) is a malleable construction in software that visitors can physically influence by moving small circular nodes over a fluid projection surface. Epicenters of the composition shift in real time in response the visitors’ choices.

C.E.B. Reas derives his software from short text instructions explaining processes that define networks. The instructions are expressed in different media including natural language, machine code, computer simulations, and static images. Each translation of these instructions reveals a different perspective, and may combine with the other forms of visualization to express a more complete representation of the constructed network of form.

Presently C.E.B. Reas‘ work is part of the Cybernetic Sensibility exhibition at the Daelim Museum in Seoul, October 25, 2006 through January 21, 2007. Reas’ work is also part of the National Design Triennale at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York December 8, 2006 – July 29, galleries and museums including bitforms gallery (New York), Eyebeam (New York), CCCB (Barcelona), STUK (Leuven), The Dallas Contemporary, Fabric Workshop and Museum (Philadelphia), National Museum for Art, Architecture and Design (Oslo), Institute for Contemporary Art (London), New Museum for Contemporary Art (New York), NTT ICC (Tokyo), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Telic (Los Angeles), BANK (Los Angeles), the Danish Film Institute (Copenhagen), [DAM] Berlin, and Kuenstlerhaus (Vienna), among other venues. In 2004 Reas was commissioned to create work for the Whitney Museum’s Artport, and he was awarded the 2005 Golden Nica from Ars Electronica with Ben Fry. C.E.B. Reas is an Associate Professor at UCLA, and holds a masters degree from MIT in Media Arts and Sciences.

Suzung Kim is an artist and commercial designer who creates work using the open source Processing software designed by C.E.B. Reas and Ben Fry. Kim uses programming language as if it were a brush or pen, and merges Modernist traditions of Western painting with Eastern attitudes toward calligraphy and drawing. The delicate line quality of Kim’s offset prints on paper complement the warm fluid washes of layered color in his screen-based works. These artworks may appear to be executed by hand, however Kim’s painting and drawings techniques are fully expressed in software code.

Presently Suzung Kim’s work is also part of the Cybernetic Sensibility exhibition at the Daelim Museum in Seoul, October 25, 2006 through January 21, 2007. Kim’s work has also been exhibited at the Sonjae Museum of Art (Kyoungjoo), Seoul Museum of Art, the Samsung Digital Gallery (Shanghai), Multimedia Art Asia Pacific (Beijing), the School of Visual Arts (New York), and bitforms gallery (Seoul). The winner of numerous awards including the Macromedia People’s Choice Award and prizes sponsored by Communication Arts and ID magazines, Kim lectures at Seoul National, Ewha, and Hongik Universities and at Korea National Art School. Kim also designs image processing for feature films, motion graphics, web, and interactive arts. Kim received a BFA and MFA from Seoul National University, and and additional MFA from School of Visual Arts in New York.