Troika, Irma Watched Over by Machines, 2020

2020

Medium

16 shades of red, 16 shades of green, 16 shades of blue, heavy body acrylic

Dimensions

85 × 63.5 cm

Status

In Gallery Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-156082

The work "Irma Watched over by Machines" (2020) is part of Troika's series of works of the same name, in which video recordings of windswept palm trees during Hurricane Katrina and Irma were translated onto canvas. On closer inspection, the painted surface is finely pixelated, the specific colors based on a raster of the digital RGB color space. The dominant green shade of Irma Watched Over by Machines is created by breaking the image down into color mosaics correspondent to the digital image recordings, in which there are twice as many green as blue or red pixels in the image. The effect of the digital image counteracting with the increased sensitivity of the human eye to green hues, is carried over into the painting. Troika replicates the technical perspective of the camera and transfers its logic manually onto the screen. The discrepancy between the objectification of the destructive event through the neutral, technical recording and the actual destructive content of the image, a natural disaster, potentially arousing emotional associations, becomes clear. Troika’s translation on canvas becomes a mechanical act in which the exact color values are predetermined and the color grid is applied by syringe. The painting style is characterized by manual replication and repetition, requiring mechanical precision. The artists investigate how digital information merges into physical reality and how both worlds interact with and influence one another.