For New York-based artist Jonathan Monaghan, Extell works as a kind of conceptual sketch. A robotic voice tries to seduce us with promises of wealth and status, while the camera offers a view of a virtual Central Park, then leads us into a perfect, neat, impossible to inhabit apartment. The artifice eventually leads to | … |

All progressive art protests the dominance of what has gone before‎. Staged incidents and riveting imagery evoke pressures and tensions with the vividness of‎ dreams and nightmares in POWERS SEEN AND UNSEEN [Poderes visibles e invisibles]. This international selection of recent moving image art, curated by Washington-based guest curator of Global Visions, Kelly Gordon, that highlights an array of‎ distinctive artistic strategies. Each cultivates awareness of “forces,” visible, invisible, exterior and interior. The exhibition designer is Gaëlle Smits.

In the case of films and videogames, we tend to take visual effects for granted, without truly understanding them as fictions. We don’t stop and say: ‘there’s a lens flare’ or ‘there’s a 3D animated character’, we just accept them. But when you give someone digital literacy, and they begin to know how those things are made, they start to see them differently –to really see them as fictions. In general, we go through life inhabiting spaces and using things that we have no idea how they’re made. I for one don’t understand how a computer works; it’s kind of a mystery to me. I guess I could read five books about it, but I probably won’t, so I just accept it. A person that works with me builds computers and has a deep understanding of how they work, so he doesn’t get angry and frustrated when they crash –he has power over them. Digital literacy, then, is about power: empowering people to not be just passive receivers.

Global Visions curator Kelly Gordon has written a text that contains useful questions to reflect on digital art, especially within the contemplative exercise of the solo show Focus: Jonathan Monaghan, which continues to be exhibited inside the Secadero 3 of Hacienda La Trinidad Parque Cultural. These approaches and interrogations come together as a sort of | … |

  NT: What are you going to show in Venezuela? JM: I’m going to be exhibiting a number of computer animated films, and they are going to be installed in various galleries spaces in Venezuela, and works are surreal explorations of power and commerce in the digital age.   NT: How has been your experience | … |

  “I’m very interested in the boundaries between what’s real and what’s virtual. I think in the digital age we have to be careful.” Jonathan Monaghan.     With a fluidity of mediums and meanings, artist Jonathan Monaghan (born New York, 1986) uses computer animation software and digital fabrication methods to create thought-provoking works that | … |

In the third installment of Corresponsal, Elena Pastor walks us through Mexican artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s exhibition Abstracción Biométrica, at Fundación Telefónica, Madrid, with photographs of her visit. Enjoy this new virtual tour without the inconvenience of geographical limitations.     Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Biometric Abstraction Curator: Katheleen Forde   In situ text Throughout his varied artistic | … |