Made by Hand / Born Digital
Yassi Mazandi, Nine, 2013. Unique Born-Porcelain, geo-polymer bound dolomite stone, casein-based coating. Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Gift of Beth Rudin Dewoody
Ena Swansea, area code, 2019. Oil and acrylic on linen. Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Museum purchase with funds provided by Kandy Budgor, Luria/Budgor Family Foundation
Analia Saban, Pleated Ink (Music Synthesizer: Max/MSP, 1996), 2020. Ink on panel. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles
Taha Heydari, Reterritorializaiton, 2023. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Barrett, New York
The exhibition Made by Hand/Born Digital features artists who use brushes, AI, paint, 3D printers, scissors, magazines printed on paper, digital looms, potter’s wheels, Photoshop, and Apple Photo (formerly iPhoto), and who complicate a clean distinction between the hand made and digital. Loans are mixed with recent gifts to the museum. By continuing to make art by hand but bringing the latest digital tools into the process, these artists subvert the supposedly unstoppable trajectory towards the total digitalization of everything. Their art tells us silicon-based artificial intelligence and our carbon-based brains can and do work together.
The exhibition contains works by Alex Heilbron, Taha Heydari, Yassi Mazandi, Justin Mortimer, Analia Saban, Ena Swansea, Sarah Rosalena, and Joey Watson, each of whom challenge a simple narrative about the inevitable triumph of machines by using the present-day tools available to them.
