En Plein Air Will Penny

Savannah, GA (August 29, 2018) – Laney Contemporary Fine Art ​presents ​en plein air​, a solo exhibition by artist Will Penny. Informed by a studio practice that transcends medium and its borders, Penny works with generative design in connection with painting, sculpture, and animation for this new body of work about the experience of perception itself. There will be an opening reception on September 13th from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm. An artist talk will take place October 18th at 6 p.m. in the gallery.
en plein air,​ commonly translated as outdoors or painting outside, explores a kind of virtual sublime. Penny experiments with a hybridized practice inspired by painting while leaving no digital stone unturned. The artist recognizes that a search for the sublime or a deepening experience with the act of perception is a journey rather than a finish line. His practice, rather than professing, intuits the importance of questioning, of research and development, all as part of an experimental studio dynamic.
The work seeks to translate the sensation of a fragmented and disembodied sense of natural wonder within our surrounding landscape. Using photogrammetry (surveying and mapping distances) of the city and natural settings of Savannah, snapshot-like fragments are synthesized into digital works that emulate the sensations of a place. Much like the practice of observational painting, or painting ​en plein air​, fragments of Savannah are reconstructed using a variety of digital programs, creating hybrid composites, which reference sites and memories without over-representation of them.
“Our relationship to technology is loaded with excitement, apprehension, hope, and terror. In my eyes, it is a new form of the unknown.” – Will Penny