Melbourne, 2014
Data Loss
NKN Gallery, September 2 - October 4
Is it premature to proclaim the beginnings of Post-Internet Art (PIA)? An art informed by, but not reliant on, all things digital? From afar one presumes Michael Staniak’s most recent works are a cheap digital trick, a straightforward print of a screen-saver pattern. Simple, but clever. But that is when the texture kicks in, the parallel physicality that makes these supposedly ‘flat’ images suddenly shimmer and broil, pulse and fragment. Staniak is the first to admit the influence of surfing the Net on his work and not so many years ago this led to his collage-like figurative works, images seized and manipulated to create montages of pseudo-surrealistic imagery. But even with those works there was an element of physicality. The factor of the painterly.
Thus, in his newest works, a strange sense of schizophrenia inevitably arises. This is a painter who takes pixels to new realms. Staniak’s work mirrors the notion of singularity, the moment when the human meets the ultimate interface. The flat surface of the screen here takes on a physicality unbeknownst to code-makers. Indeed, it is no longer an issue of flatness as it is an issue of terrain, a strangely rugged realm of exploration and alien topography. Staniak’s practice has become an ultimate expression of the analog meeting the digital. It is both reminiscent of, and yet the adverse of, William Gibson’s opening of the cyberpunk classic Neuromancer (1984) with the strangely evocative line: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” Staniak’s approach is, in fact, while equally poetic, not far removed from Gibson’s vision. Staniak’s channel however is tuned to maximum impact. His ‘screens’ pulse with almost erotic intensity, his paint irradiated and glowing with furious but barely contained energy. Like the computer screen, these canvases glow with information and content. Whilst abstract these are not abstractions as we have known them and it is the mastery of the application of that old-tech material, paint, thus the application of the old, to create the shock of the now.
The very title of Staniak’s show – DATA LOSS – calls into question a multitude of issues ranging from our almost total reliance on electronic data, at least in the developed world, in everything from day-to-day shopping to military infrastructure. What happens when, for innumerable reasons, this data is lost? Uncountable floppy discs sit gathering dust in offices and libraries the world over, unreadable to all affects and purposes. To be sure, ‘old’ artifacts remain, from the Mona Lisa to the American Constitution on canvas and paper respectively, but they too are protected by systems that rely upon data, whether temperature control or security.
Works in Staniak’s DATA series are composed of pulverised DVDs and resin on canvas. He describes the smashed plastic of the DVDs when embedded into the resin as being not dissimilar to mixing pigment into paint. Pigment or colour is indeed a communicative tool, but Staniak is essentially inserting information, or the ghosts thereof, into his narrative. Staniak also utilises a crushed Millennium Disc (M-Disc), a write-only optical disc technology which its makers claim lasts far longer than regular reflective DVDs – up to 1000 years – which is, of course, in the grand scheme of things, not that long (according to National Geographic magazine the oldest artworks in Egypt are approximately 15,000 years old whilst The Journal of Archaeological Science has identified the Aboriginal rock art site Nawarla Gabarnmang in the Northern Territory as being 28,000 years old.) Ironically, if cared for, Staniak’s M-Disc-derived work in terms of (aesthetic) information output could well outlast whatever mysterious and now irretrievable information on the stuff of which it is made.
Staniak’s work evinces a fascination with the secret nature of information. The very nature of ‘reading’ whether literally or visually is called into question. Codes are hidden. Secrets are compiled in multiplicities, hidden in layers creating their own arcane codex. In his PNG series Staniak plays both neuromancer and alchemist, creating a palimpsest or layering of casting compound but hiding digital images of code printed on the undulating surface before it has been painted. The text is that of an image of another one of Staniak’s own paintings lifted from the Web, broken down to alphanumeric code (in this case Base64 code – text codes that translate an image onto a website or email). This already mysterious (at least to the average user) ability to transfer complex images instantaneously calls into question the potential corruption of the viewer to digest imagery. Why spend the time to travel all the way to the Museo del Prado in Madrid to view the Las Pinturas Negras (Black Paintings) of Goya when they can appear on your kitchen table after breakfast? Will all paintings be viewed and all books be read via the Web? And, if so, just what will be lost? And perhaps not just the experiential – will there be a day when a truly massive solar flare wipes out our ‘stored’ culture?
DATA LOSS scrutinises the validity in the ways in which we archive and consume information. It calls into question the increasing redundancy of personal storage media (CDs or USBs) versus the “cloud” or websites. It explores paintings’ power to outlast modern media and questions whether painting and art itself will only survive on the Web as bits and bytes. As extremely contemporaneous as Staniak’s work may be (he happily admits to his affair with the Net), it is clear that he simultaneously questions the validity of how we consider and preserve ‘information.’ Staniak is no Luddite per se, no ‘machine-breaker.’ He clearly loves new technologies. But as with anything worth loving one must question just what that love represents. Staniak in fact betrays that love by the simple act of making paintings. Solid, powerful artifacts that both beguile and bewitch. Perhaps, we wonder, whether the Net is no more than a chimera. Reality, in DATA LOSS hangs on the walls, imposing, powerful and, more than anything, nigh impossible to delete.
This excerpt, originally written by Dr. Ashley Crawford, was transcribed from the forward of the exhibition catalogue Michael Staniak: Data loss.
