Floating Through the Metaverse presents three artists working at the intersection of painting and digital media.
Simon Denny’s Metaverse Landscapes combine digital and physical components to explore the conditions under which ownership is made possible, looking at how land claims are staked and naturalized online and off. Each gridded landscape painting depicts a parcel from metaverses such as Decentraland, The Sandbox, Voxels, etc.—a unit of “real-estate” that experiments with digital property traded on the blockchain. A corresponding Title Deed NFT is issued alongside each painting. The Title Deed points to the owner of the metaverse property token, the owner of the physical painting, and the holder of the NFT.
Chris Dorland is well known in the artworld for his seemingly abstract landscape paintings and videos, which upon closer look reveal a stunning blend of bitmap icons, early computer generated drawings and mesh grids, scans of dot-matrix printing, and cyberpunk glitch in a distinctive digital color palette.
For the last two decades Luke Murphy has wrestled with resolving the rude intrusion of the digital world into his love of painting. In the mid 1990s, he was one of the first digital artists to use the web itself, presenting pixels as both content and medium. Rather than oil paint and canvas, code is Murphy’s medium.
We are also exhibiting digital art from Bermuda, curated by Holly Mazar-Fox, as well as a 3-D printed sculptural installation by Gracelee Lawrence.
Where does anything end in this infinite world? by Gracelee Lawrence is a transformative sculptural installation in Paggi House’s Parlor room by artist Gracelee Lawrence. The installation explores the symbiotic relationships between humans, plants, and the environment across geologic time. Through sculpture, technology, and sound, it compresses time scales to depict landscape evolution since the 1840s, highlighting native flora's resilience. Focusing on the four windows of the Parlor room, the installation features twisting plant sculptures merging organic forms with artificial materials, symbolizing plants' ongoing quest for vitality and light. Crafted from shiny multicolored 3D printed PLA and translucent resin, these sculptures blur the line between organic and artificial, reflecting our connection to nature and fostering dialogue on ecosystem preservation. Sound by Ben Seretan and Thor Harris. Gracelee Lawrence received a Masters in Fine Arts from UTAustin in 2016.