Lot
31
80%_match: Ulla Pedersen “cut up canvas I.1”, 2017
Self-generated scanner painting, inkjet print on canvas, 2018
98 x 72 cm
Unique edition + 1 AP
Estimate
$4 000
This work was produced as part of the installation All We’d Ever Need is One Another, a continuously running “art-factory” operating independently of human input. The installation self-generates images using two automated flatbed scanners lying on their side, with scanning surfaces pointing at one another. Each image created is analyzed by machine-learning algorithms trained on a database of contemporary artworks in economic and institutional circulation. When an image matches an existing artwork beyond a certain percentage, it is “validated” as art and titled to refer to the nearest similar artwork. The resulting prints play on notions of technological automatization and originality in the context of cultural consumption and the economics of artistic production.
Biographical note
Adam Basanta explores technological practices as active, multi-sensory performances distributed through a variety of entangled human, cultural, material, and computational agencies. Born in Tel Aviv and raised in Vancouver, Basanta has lived and worked in Montréal since 2010. Having studied contemporary music composition, he has developed an art practice in mixed-media installations.
Since 2015, Basanta’s works have been exhibited in galleries and institutions including Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland), Arsenal art contemporain (Montréal), Galerie Charlot (Paris), National Art Centre Tokyo, V Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Carroll/Fletcher Gallery (London, UK), american medium (New York), Serralves Museum (Porto, Portugal), Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst (Oldenburg, Germany), York Art Gallery (UK), and the Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe.
He has received international prizes, including the Prix Pierre-Ayot (2018), the Japan Media Arts Prize (2016), and the Aesthetica Art Prize (2017). In 2018 he was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award. His work is in the permanent collections of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Collection of the Ville de Montréal, and Collection of the Museum of Transitory Art (Ljubljana, Slovenia).
As an experimental composer and performer, his concert music, live performances, and sound recordings are presented worldwide.