ANGELL GALLERY is pleased to present SIMULATORS II, an exhibition of new digital art featuring nine artists Napoleon Brousseau, Mitchell Chan, Alex Fischer, Francoise Gamma, Brenna Murphy, Aamna Muzaffar, Rafael Ochoa, Geoffrey Pugen and Tobias Williams. The exhibition is up in the east and west galleries from February 21 to March 22, 2014. A related exhibition by Philippe Blanchard will run concurrently in the Project Room. An opening reception will be held on February 21, 69 PM.

In recent critical discussion, the phrase Post-Internet art has surfaced to replace the term New Media, reflecting the now ubiquitous nature of digital technology. Now that the Internet has shifted from novelty to normalcy, Post-Internet artists are focusing less on the means and more on the ends, creating work that couples virtual reality with a strong material presence. The art worlds embrace of this new phase was signaled by the first auction dedicated exclusively to digital art, staged by renowned auction house, Phillips, in October of 2013. Angell Gallery has been at the forefront of promoting this new wave of digital practice, and in SIMULATORS II the gallery showcases artists who represent the exciting diversity of this rapidly expanding field.

Art history provides a rich mine for a number of artists in the show. Rafael Ochoas sumptuous digital paintings are made using a unique rendering process he has developed over several years. Focusing on select elements drawn from images of Old Master paintings that he finds online, Ochoa creates new works that infuse the beauty of historical art with a subtle postmodern flare.

Geoffrey Pugins video, Bird Lady, is an uncanny revision of the tradition of Grand Manner Portraiture, in which aristocrats are pictured in a bucolic setting symbolic of land ownership. The chimerical Bird Lady blinks at us from her eerie forested realm, where the cycle of day and night plays out at heightened speed and intensified colour, making it clear that we are voyeurs into a world that is hers, not ours.

Mitchell Chan pays tribute to 20th century conceptual grandmaster Sol Lewitt. Translating Lewitts instructions for wall drawings into computer code, Chan generates video animations on a mural-sized screen that mimic the visual results of Lewitts original pieces. The chance element in Lewitts method, which entails others executing his often minimal instructions, finds its mirror in randomized variables that produce different results each time the program is run.

Other artists in SIMULATORS II reflect on the information ages rich smorgasbord of sources, ranging from analog to web-based. Alex Fischer, a self-styled sociologist of internet culture, combs the web for diverse images drawn from art, science and technology. These he twists and turns, mows and mulches, to produce brand new entities in the forms of digital paintings and sculptures that tease us with hints at narrative possibilities while straddling the borders of abstraction.

Tobias Williams also responds to the wealth of visual material on the net, in particular the issue of contextless information. In The Way Of The Future V1, Williams fashions stacks of melting future-pop burgers, resplendent in iridescent pinks, neon stripes and black-purple patterns. The resulting works exemplify the boundary-breaking nature of the new digital art, appearing simultaneously two and three dimensional, high and low art. A Claes Oldenburg for the digital age?

Digital artists are also exploring the intersections of virtual and actual reality. The work of Aamna Muzaffar is her response to the perceptible, legible and invisible of the information age. Using a variety of digital procedures and processes, coupled with chance events, she creates abstract paintings and sculptures that are analog, yet whose conception is routed in technology.

Brenna Murphy uses personal recording devices and computer graphics to weave digital labyrinths. In her video, elementalnanostrand, home movie type imagery beaches, parks, family, friends, homes morph into psychedelic swirls and patterns that evoke hallucinogenic experiences. A superimposed image of a computer screen, spiraling in upon itself, underscores the computers role as mediator between physical, psychic and virtual realms.

Napoleon Brousseau uses augmented reality software to create a new level of interactive portraiture. A digital art pioneer, for SIMULATORS II, Brousseau presents a self-portrait featuring over 80 layers of imagery, including the artists power tools, objects of great personal significance. Viewers may learn more about each through an augmented reality app that provides access to text, web links and videos. This state-of-the-art technology is balanced by the densely textured neo-expressionism of the image.

In contrast to Brousseaus cutting-edge technology, the elusive Francoise Gamma uses obsolete software to create her delightfully bizarre animated GIFs. Graphically rendered figures, contorted, mutated and distorted, arise, stride, cavort, explode or collapse in a jerky ballet performed in a cyber space limbo where the strangest things can, and do, happen.

ANGELL GALLERY is pleased to present PHILIPPE BLANCHARD: COLOUR RHYTHM, a special installation by this acclaimed multi-disciplinary artist. The exhibition will be on view in the Project Room from February 21 to March 22, 2014, with an opening reception on February 21, 69 PM. This show runs concurrently with SIMULATORS II, Angell Gallerys showcase of new digital art.

Philippe Blanchards dazzling sculptural light installations have been likened to walking into an animated GIF. Using programmed RGB lighting and a library of screen-printed patterns he has developed, Blanchard creates expanded animations, in which the moving image is liberated from the constraints of the frame, the screen, fixed durations, representation and two-dimensionality. The resulting immersive environments reflect a diverse array of influences, ranging from special effects and computer graphics to the role of pattern in fine art, decorative arts, music and pop culture.

For Colour Rhythm, Blanchard draws upon both early 20th century avant-garde art and todays digital culture. Walls and tower-like forms in the Project Room will be covered with screen-printed modular wallpaper in patterns inspired by Sonia Delaunay, Gunta Stlzl and Anni Albers, three modernists who worked with textiles. Investigating patterns sometimes ambivalent relationship to the avant-garde, Blanchard also considers its role as aid to contemplation, as found in Islamic art, the serial compositions of Steve Reich and Terry Riley, or even in contemporary electronic dance music.

Blanchards RBG red, blue, green colour scheme references the primary colours of light, as well as the building blocks of digital imagery. Programmed lighting animates the repeating patterns, transforming the plain room into an invigorating psychedelic space in which elements derived from pop culture, modernism and traditional quilting patterns fuse into an Op Art experience for the 21st century.