DIGITAL NATIVES: Thomas van Linge & Vivien Zhang

The RYDER is pleased to present an exhibition by Vivien Zhang and Thomas van Linge exploring the visual language of the Internet interface and its effects and contexts in society and culture.

As members of a generation who grew up with the Internet (Zhang b. 1990, van Linge b. 1989), both artists share a similar language and creation process while working in very different mediums. Vivien Zhang’s paintings and Thomas van Linge’s interdisciplinary practice demonstrate a contemporary means of digesting and expelling visual content, detached from its meaning and focused on its transmission.

Vivien Zhang’s paintings are often constructed through the use of algorithms found in digital imaging tools – a by-product approach from our ways of reading and engaging with visual material today. Each painting is conceived as a site for assemblage, where context-specific motifs such as the mathematical shape ‘gömböc’ or manicules found in ancient manuscripts are carefully selected and endlessly reproduced.

Selected context-specific images also populate the work of Thomas van Linge. Usually salvaged from the Internet, these symbols are reclaimed and presented as signposts of contemporary life, which inform the production of his sculptures, videos, music tracks and found objects. Mechanical reproduction and digital post-production are often employed to intentionally remove any trace of authorship. For instance, in his sculpture ‘LOVE’, the artist digitally reproduces the commonly known hand-heart gesture in printed aluminum composite, a material commercially used for signage.

We live in a world of mediated content easily made redundant through its constant propagation. The artists in this exhibition not only acknowledge this condition, but seek to create new meanings through the reassembling of information.