28 Feb Morgan Stokes | Virtual Gaze Solo Exhibition | Curatorial+Co.

Curatorial+Co. presents Morgan Stokes’ second solo exhibition in our Redfern space from 2-12 March 2022. Virtual Gaze is Morgan’s meditation on life pre and post pandemic, and our reliance and compliance with digital surveillance.

Says Morgan: “As the pandemic unfolded, our world view inadvertently shifted from the physical to the virtual. Our loved ones and colleagues were rendered to the maximum degree of pixel density our devices could handle; we became our front-cameras. The tradition of illusion in art shifted into our palms and we were now the illusion; every online image a masterpiece of trompe l’oeil.

“Virtual Gaze has been created with these ideas in mind. The screen is the muse: both its contents and its surface. The works are formal studies into material properties of what comprises a painting or sculpture, underscoring them as physical objects and therefore exploring their verisimilitude, their reality versus virtuality. They are not images to scroll past, they are paintings. The sparseness of the works disrupts a traditional reading of art – and digital images – where subtly of texture and materiality become vehicles for meaning. Narrative can be interpreted through material, through perception and light, through the sharing of a unique space and time between human and work.”

Video by Arvin Prem Kumar @arvinpremkumar