bitforms gallery

Reception: Friday, September 8, 6 – 8 PM
Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 11 AM – 6 PM & Sunday 12 – 6 PM

bitforms gallery is pleased to announce Echo, Daniel Canogar’s third solo exhibition in New York. Featuring the U.S. premiere of his flexible screen sculpture series, the show includes six objects that illuminate their environment. Echo opens concurrently with Tendril, the artist’s recently completed permanent installation for the Tampa International Airport and his largest project to date.

Based in Spain, Daniel Canogar is internationally renowned for pioneering a technique that enables him to create sculptural screens with a membrane-like quality that can conform to multiple surfaces, objects, and architectures. Each work in Echo consists of a grid of LED tiles with flexible rubber-backed PCB (printed circuit board) modules that uniquely allow for torsion and curvature. Outfitted with over one hundred twenty thousand points of light each, in concert, these modules depict scintillating abstract compositions. The undulating forms encourage a haptic relationship of the viewer to the moving image.

The on-screen compositions in Echo are produced in response to real-time global environmental phenomenon such as temperature, rainfall, seismic activity, and other data sets. The works cull data from the web and process it into animations using a software developed by the artist’s team specific to each work. The animations displayed generate dynamic visual output based on complex mathematical descriptions of natural entropic processes such as the movement of water molecules in a ripple. The data collected influences various qualities of the generative animation such as speed, rotation, and color.

The sinuous forms and exposed cables appear creature-like, reminiscent of phosphorescent deep-water organisms with glowing membranes and tentacles. Echo’s physical embodiment of screen-skin is inspired by the writing of cultural theorist Giuliana Bruno on materiality and media:

“This membrane of the screen becomes a material possibility for us to connect. It presents a form of empathy, allowing us to reach to the other side via projection. Surfaces like these are things that one touches and they touch you in return.”

The works in Echo invite us to examine the screen as sculpture and search for empathy in the constant deluge of sterile abstract data.

BIOGRAPHY
Daniel Canogar (b. 1964, Madrid, Spain) is a multidisciplinary artist who works in photography, video, sculpture, and installation. His most recent work focuses on treating the screen as sculpture by using flexible LED tiles, allowing him to manipulate the screen into twists and curves. He has completed several large-scale public works, most recently Tendril, a permanent installation for the Tampa International Airport and his largest project to date.

Recent solo exhibitions of his work include the Sala Verónicas, Murcia; Fundación Telefónica Lima; Bildmuseet Museum of Contemporary Art and Visual Culture in Umeå, Sweden; El Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo (EAC), Montevideo; art ON, Istanbul; and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Gas Natural Fenosa, A Coruña. His work has also been exhibited at the Reina Sofia Contemporary Art Museum, Madrid; the Palacio Velázquez, Madrid; Max Estrella Gallery, Madrid; Filomena Soares Gallery, Lisbon; Guy Bärtschi Gallery, Geneve; Mimmo Scognamiglio Artecontemporanea, Milano; the Santa Mónica Art Center, Barcelona; the Alejandro Otero Museum, Caracas; the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio; the Offenes Kulturhaus Center for Contemporary Art, Linz; the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfallen, Dusseldorf; Hamburger Banhof Museum, Berlin; Borusan Contemporary Museum, Istanbul; the American Museum of Natural History, New York; Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, VA; the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; and the Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh.

Canogar holds a MA in photography from New York University and the International Center for Photography, and a BA from Complutense University of Madrid.

Download Press Release