Artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson has been interrogating the deleterious effects of technology and surveillance on human behavior and daily life for more than five decades. Her work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Tate Modern, London. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art (2018), the Award of Distinction from Prix Ars Electronica (2020), and a Special Mention Jury Prize at the Fifty-Ninth Venice Biennale (2022). “Moving-Image Innovator,” a retrospective of the artist’s video work, was staged at MoMA in 2024.
Cohen, who died in 2016 at the age of eighty-seven, was one of the first artists to collaborate with software and machines. This historical presentation—which focused on the output of AARON, an artificial intelligence software created by Cohen during the late 1960s that was specially designed to generate art—anticipated the emergence of AIs that are widely available today.
Walker believes that the destructive forces trapped in our souls can be rechoreographed to elicit new possibilities for humanity. This installation, commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, embodies this belief in the transformation of trauma into hope.
The actor’s portrayal of the character Elizabeth, an art critic, parodies with unfortunate accuracy a few of the more common eccentricities exhibited by some of those who populate the art world. For instance, Elizabeth embraces a type of doublespeak that is mired in contradiction and seems to believe she’s smarter than any other mortal occupying the planet.
The title of this show, “Cardinals,” refers to a term the US Air Force uses to characterize “exotic aircraft of unknown origin,” according to Paglen. He learned this from Richard Doty, “an Air Force counterintelligence officer and ‘Mirage Man’ who used UFO lore to spread disinformation about Air Force technology programs.” Doty was the titular subject of a 2023 video by the artist, which was screened at San Francisco’s Minnesota Street Project Foundation around the time “Cardinals” was up at Altman Siegel, a gallery I also show with. This exhibition revealed how easily propaganda can be manufactured and spread, even when it grates against the limits of reason and perception.
These artists and occasional collaborators train computer programs—including but not limited to AI—to create autonomous works of art generated exclusively through machine learning. These specialized “artworks” also possess a devious capacity to transform unsuspecting humans.
Mobile Home Library, 1938–39,conceived by the artist/inventor Frederick Kiesler (1890–1965) more than eighty years ago—but realized for the first time ever in this presentation—was meant to be a traveling, modularized repository of information that could be accessed with relative ease. This show was filled with various archival materials, including sketches for a device meant to replicate human sight and cognition that Kiesler referred to as a “Vision Machine.”
This exhibition, the artist’s first retrospective in France, takes on intimacy, history, and culture by offering a subversive take on conspicuous consumption. According to the show’s press release, Syms “presents a kaleidoscopic experience in which existential questions are embodied in works”—namely, copies of items from and around the artist’s own studio—“which are then turned into editions available for sale.”
The fashion photographer’s neutral backgrounds were meant to bring attention to his models’ physical and facial expressions. This exhibition spanned Penn’s nearly seventy-year career, capturing subjects from virtually every stratum of society, including hippies, Hells Angels, and even Audrey Hepburn.
Some of the newest ones on the market promise results that were “never before possible,” according to the advertising. Revered figures such as Harvard University professor George Church have created methods for turning on youth-promoting genes. Scientists like him believe such concoctions will soon become widely available. Though illegal in the United States, many of these formulas can be purchased in other parts of the world. I initiated an investigation of these serums in 2024 as part of a new series about life extension. I keep mine stored and exhibited in a refrigerator set to an optimum temperature of thirty-eight degrees.
This speculative technology could be used for a wide range of applications, such as helping power grids store energy.
