Cory Arcangel

Cory Arcangel hacks into the systems and software that define our networked lives, introducing glitches and misfires that reveal the perils of technological dependence. His debut solo exhibition at Greene Naftali will intensify themes honed over his twenty-year career, using the structures and social mores of digital platforms as his primary artistic material.

Featuring both real-time and recorded media interventions, works on paper and riffs on painting, the exhibition centers on his most ambitious work to date: a live feed of a custom computer navigating the role-playing game Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, using machine learning—intended to optimize performance—toward less streamlined ends. By turns hypnotic and sinister, droll and dark, Arcangel’s work reflects on the breakneck pace of technological and cultural obsolescence, and the fleeting nature of what he calls “the ‘image world’ that both consumes us and fits so snugly into the palm of our hands.”

Cory Arcangel lives and works in Stavanger, Norway and Brooklyn, New York. He is a composer, artist, and entrepreneur. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Firstsite Gallery, Essex, United Kingdom (2019); CC Foundation, Shanghai (2019); The Kitchen, New York (2017); Galleria D'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy (2015); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2012); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2011); and the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2005). His work is in the collections of Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; Tate, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.