Enter the Machine

Garis & Hahn is pleased to present Enter the Machine, an exhibition of 9 new styrene printed works by New York-based artist and programmer, Eric Corriel. Using custom software and displayed in synchronized pulsating light boxes, Corriel takes an ordinary computer hard drive and turns it inside-out, making its contents visible to the human eye. In his second solo exhibition with the gallery, Corriel raises questions about the digitization of contemporary society and creates a body of work that explores humanity's dance with technology.

The Internet and the concomitant uploading of the most intimate parts of our personal lives is an accepted and near-requisite aspect of modern existence. Corriel posits that new and better tools are required to fully understand the implications of leading such digitally-oriented lives. This engenders the question: What other tools do we have to make sense of the storage of our personal data? If we could somehow meet our digital files face-to-face, what would they look like? Enter the Machine explores these ideas by giving a visual face to the unseen nature of our stored lives.

Evoking the preoccupations of Light and Space artists and the post-Conceptual work of Cory Arcangel, Corriel's work shifts perceptions of personal technology in order to understand how its vernacular is reshaping culture and altering ideas around the identity of our files and ourselves.

Unpacking the abstract notion of a digital file, Enter the Machine visually guides the viewer through the artist's own personal computer. Approximating the experience of shrinking himself to photograph his own data, Corriel's original C++ program renders a composite portrait of a specific folder. This process is repeated in 9 sections of his hard drive, resulting in 9 unique works. In the piece entitled "Enter the Machine 1.0 AKA My Desktop", Corriel's digital data is rendered as a multi-colored abstraction, consciously or unconsciously rendering what is distinctly inorganic material as an organic form: neurons, novas, flora and the like. The works, displayed in light boxes resembling individual, pulsating computer screens, create an immersive, near breathing biomorphic sculpture, transforming the flat logic and unfeeling information of a hard drive into what is effectively an experience of moving about the artist's digital self. The installation will include a sound composition by Krista Dragomer.

About the Artist

Born on Long Island, Eric Corriel studied fine art and computer science and received a Bachelors of Arts in philosophy from Cornell University. He later received a Diplôme National d'Arts Plastiques (National Diploma of Fine Art), focusing on Digital Art, from the École Régionale Supérieure d'Expression Plastique in Lille, France. Currently living in Brooklyn, Eric takes the urban landscape as a medium in which to create site-specific video installations in the public realm. He teaches interactive design at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where he is also Lead Web Designer and Developer.

For his artwork, Eric has been awarded by the New York Foundation of the Arts, New York Council for the Arts, and the Public Art Network. As a web designer and developer he has received awards from the Webbys, Davey Awards, and W3.