“Very few people will ever see a show of mine in person,” 26-year-old digital artist Artie Vierkant told us. “Even I haven’t seen most of them.” It’s not for lack of opportunities. Vierkant’s been showing frequently, and at well-known venues: China Art Objects in LA and REFERENCE in Richmond both gave him solo shows, and he’s participated in close to 20 group exhibitions over the past year, at venues like SEVENTEEN Gallery (London) and The Center for Contemporary Art (Glasgow).
Still, Vierkant is interested in a wider public, so his work is designed to be seen online and off. “When I was in school,” he told us, “my professors would constantly remind us that the way we chose to document our work was just as important as the work itself.” Since most people will only see his work in JPEGs, Vierkant reasons, why not make the JPEGs something special? In his latest—and smartest, and most beautiful—series, Image-Objects, he reworks photographs of his own shows to ensure that the full experience can only be had on the web.
What you’d see in the gallery, though, is no slouch. Vierkant is an accomplished abstractionist, and in his gradient-based Image-Objects and video works like “Solvent Study – CM Reverse” (2010), he’s shown an attention to detail and instinct for color. In one series, Fingerprints, he seems to have isolated exactly the hue of the purplish floaters that hang out in your eye’s vitreous humor; the result is like a lighthearted James Turrell. It’s those skills, more than any one good year or smart artistic strategy, that has us thinking of Vierkant as the next art star to break into the mainstream. [Q and A and slideshow, after the jump.]
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