Palo Gallery Presents American Glitch
February 9, 2024 – April 6, 2024 |
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 | Orejarena & Stein, Life on Mars Training Simulation (2021). |
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| Palo Gallery presents American Glitch, a new exhibition by artist duo Orejarena & Stein (b. 1994, Colombia and United Kingdom), and the photographers’ debut solo exhibition in New York City. Presenting a series of new and recent photographs, American Glitch examines the slip between fact and fiction and its manifestation in the physical landscape of the United States, the duo’sadopted home. Orejarena & Stein lead us to examine that amidst an overwhelming sea of unending information available in an instant, society is left asking what is real and what's fake. What can the world trust, and what is a ‘glitch’? To Orejarena & Stein, screen dominance, conspiracy theories, fake news, and the advent of the Metaverse call to question our reality and our potential existence in a ‘simulation,’ a term employed as a satirical collective protest against late-stage capitalism and an increased dependence on technology. To exist in an online community is to bear witness to the ‘simulation’, where images are posted as personal evidence of spotting a ‘glitch in our reality.’ A concept initially explored in films such as 'The Matrix’ and 'The Truman Show,’ a ‘glitch’ reflects a generation’s collective experience wherein the digital and physical worlds have merged; a world in which five senses seem inadequate against campaigns of conspiracy. The artists spent years treating the internet as our collective subconscious, collating posts on social media and Reddit threads of ‘evidence of glitches in real life’. These threads and images become a place for a new form of community and connection across time and space. Orejarena & Stein then photograph sites around the US which remind them or people on the internet of real-life glitches. Such locations include California City – the blueprint of a perfect town – replete with ‘paper roads,’ avenues, and cul-de-sacs, which were never completed; or a staged Iraqi village at Fort Irwin, the U.S. Army base in the Mojave Desert. |
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 | Orejarena & Stein, Synthetic Street. Collage (2021). |
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By merging traditional and contemporary photographic techniques Orejarena & Stein transform tools perceived by others as artistic errors into intentional elements to prompt reflection on the intersection of technology, perception, and the human experience. The duo has conducted years of research on social media to discover that online spaces have fostered original forms of community which span time and space, where participation in a thought marketplace creates legitimate feelings of connection. Realizing this research in a comprehensive collection, American Glitch brings together photographs made with a large-format camera coalesced with images sourced from the internet of peoples’ evidence of ‘glitches in resal life’. Utilizing digital elements such as Adobe Photoshop and AI tools, the exhibition includes large-scale prints of Orejana & Stein’s photographs integrated with an installation of smaller-scale prints of the ‘glitch in real life archive’ to form a constellation between two modes of exploring photographic veracity. Thousands of photographs are created daily, and American Glitch examines the intersection of personal existence within this new collective. Amidst an inundation of digital images, Orejarena & Stein exist at the juncture where hope and truth are still alive. |
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Notes to Editors
American Glitch will lend its name to Orejana & Stein’s second book, published by Gnomic Book and with a foreword by International Center of Photography curator David Campany. Alongside the publication is a 52-page insert featuring contributions from 36 renowned artists, writers and curators. American Glitch will debut at Palo Gallery on February 9th, 2024. A public talk with Orejana & Stein and David Campany will be hosted at Palo Gallery, on March 1st, 2024. The artists have recently returned from a commission by The New York Times that enabled them to return to the Mars simulation in Utah (images of which appear in the American Glitch series); The duo were embedded into the simulation for four nights and five days. Photos from the experience will be included in the forthcoming presentations of the American Glitch series.
About the Artists
Orejarena & Stein (b. Colombia, 1994 & UK, 1994) are a multimedia artist duo based in New York. Their work examines the intersection of technology, memory, and the duo’s desire to explore American mythologies and narratives. Fascinated with the emergent properties inherent to photographing as a pair using only a single camera, their practice explores collaboration in an individualistic medium. Orejarena & Stein conduct extensive research into collective image production within a world saturated by visual images. Their work has been exhibited internationally and can be found within public and private collections, including The J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, CA), The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, TX), The Nguyen Art Foundation (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center (Vassar College, NY), New York State Museum (Albany, NY), and The Ann Tenenbaum & Thomas H. Lee Family Collection, among others. A collection of their work, Long Time No See, was published by Jiazazhi Press in 2022 and is held in the special collections library of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY). Their second publication, American Glitch, will be published February 2024. Orejarena & Stein were selected as 2024 FOAM Talents, with their series American Glitch to be exhibited in a group show at FOAM in Amsterdam opening February 22, 2024. The duo will have their first solo museum exhibition Tactics & Mythologies curated by Nadine Isabelle Heinrich, which will include work from their projects Long Time No See and American Glitch, opening at the Deichtorhallen Museum in Hamburg in September 2024.
About Palo Gallery
Established in 2018 in New York City by third-generation art collector and dealer Paul Henkel, Palo Gallery brings to bear a tradition of art scholarship and patronage, working as a true thought partner with artists to realize their visions and create dynamic presentations. Extensive research by the Palo curatorial team ensures that each exhibition is advised by the art historical canon and contemporary cultural touchpoints. In 2022, Palo Gallery opened its new 3,400-square-foot flagship space designed by Selldorf Architects in the NoHo district of Manhattan as the only dedicated partner showcasing Vica by Annabelle Selldorf. A destination of discovery, Palo Gallery’s multifaceted program ranges from tightly curated, thematic group exhibitions to insightful art historically informed solo exhibitions spanning a breadth of artistic endeavors.
Since its inception, Palo Gallery has sought to incorporate thematic elements into its curatorial practice – whether it be group shows or solo presentations. Early exhibitions marked the gallery’s foray into concept-driven presentations focusing on themes of memory and our most primitive instincts. Memories Manifest (2021) saw seven artists working in response to each other and the theme of memory, while Primordial (2021) investigated the ways that thoughts, emotions, reactions, and experiences speak to our most primitive instincts. The large-scale Real Wild (2022) presented an array of representations and interpretations of iconography from the American Wild West, a setting of which many of us have a collective archetype that the exhibition sought to re-contextualize. Building on the success of these conceptual group exhibitions, Palo has continued navigating contemporary cultural topics via art historical narratives with a number of solo exhibitions. Today, the gallery continues to showcase thematic presentations that offer Palo Gallery and its artists a unique opportunity to explore pivotal cultural and historical topics at a level that transcends those achieved via a standard solo exhibition. Palo Gallery is located at 30 Bond St., New York, NY.
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