I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen

February 12, 2023 - April 30, 2023
Nam June Paik, TV Buddha, 1992

Nam June Paik
TV Buddha, 1992
Buddha, monitor, CCT camera 
53 × 83 × 22 inches
Nicola Erni Collection

February 12, 2023 - April 30, 2023

PURCHASE TICKETS

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth presents the landmark I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen, a thematic group exhibition that examines the screen’s vast impact on art from 1969 to the present. This exhibition surveys more than sixty works by fifty artists over the past five decades. The artists included examine screen culture through a broad range of media such as paintings, sculpture, video games, digital art, augmented reality, and video.

Screens affect nearly every aspect of life today. Their pervasiveness has bred a 24/7 breaking news cycle, the looming corporate-sponsored virtual-reality “Metaverse,” unlimited accessibility and content, and an ease in how ideas and images are distributed, undoubtedly shaping culture in profound ways. This exhibition starts in 1969—the year of the televised Apollo moon landing and the launch of the internet’s prototype, ARPANET—as this was the watershed year where collective connectivity through screens was first mobilized in mainstream culture. This era forged what the media theorist Marshall McLuhan presciently deemed in the 1960s a “global village,” a place where distance is collapsed and people from across the world readily interact. Following this trajectory, contemporary life is hybrid and increasingly mediated through screens. These flat and finite surfaces embody more than what meets the eye—they hold up a mirror to society and contribute to forming meaning in life and mainstream culture.

I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen is organized into nine key themes: liminal space, connectivity, surveillance, the repository, digital abstraction, the posthuman body, automation and the loneliness epidemic, ecology, and turning a mirror on ourselves.

More than 25,000 square feet of gallery space will be devoted to the exhibition, which will include iconic works by prominent national and international artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, such as Cory Arcangel, American Artist, Gretchen Bender, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Arthur Jafa, Nam June Paik, Hito Steyerl, and Andy Warhol, and as well as several leading artists living in Texas, including Liss LaFleur, Kristin Lucas, and John Pomara. Several new and never-before-seen works by key artists Caitlin Cherry, Simon Denny, Kahlil Robert Irving, and Hasan Elahi will debut in this exhibition. This is the most in-depth show of its kind in the Southwest region and is only one of a few presentations exploring art and digital technology in the past decade at this scale. The exhibition is organized by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and is curated by Curator Alison Hearst.

Click here to view online artworks by Alice Bucknell, Guthrie Lonergan, Cassie McQuater, and Jon Rafman.

 

Artists in the Exhibition

Morehshin Allahyari
Cory Arcangel
American Artist
Gretchen Bender
Alice Bucknell
Nancy Burson
Caitlin Cherry
Harold Cohen
Petra Cortright
Vuk Ćosić
Simon Denny
Hasan Elahi
Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0
Cao Fei
Wade Guyton
Peter Halley
Frederick Hammersley
Lynn Hershman Leeson
Jacqueline Humphries
Kahlil Robert Irving
Arthur Jafa
Huntrezz Janos
Eduardo Kac
Liss LaFleur
Guthrie Lonergan
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Kristin Lucas
Carson Lynn
Eva and Franco Mattes
Cassie McQuater
!Mediengruppe Bitnik
Tatsuo Miyajima
Laura Owens
Trevor Paglen
Nam June Paik
John Pomara
Jon Rafman
Jason Salavon
Jacolby Satterwhite
Lillian F. Schwartz
Rick Silva
Elias Sime
Avery Singer
Skawennati
Molly Soda
Frances Stark
Hito Steyerl
Penelope Umbrico
Andy Warhol
Wickerham & Lomax

 

Please note: Due to the fragile nature of the technology on view, some works may require maintenance. We apologize for any temporary disruptions during your visit.
This exhibition contains mature content.

I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen is made possible through the generous support of the Texas Commission on the Arts, the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation and the Fort Worth Tourism Public Improvement District, with additional support from the Fort Worth Promotion and Development Fund.

 

Nam June Paik
TV Buddha, 1992
Buddha, monitor, CCT camera 
53 × 83 × 22 inches
Nicola Erni Collection