After the Feast

JOSHUA LIEBOWITZ

DECEMBER 9 – DECEMBER 18, 2016
OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 6–9 PM

“…sans eyes, sans ears, sans teeth, sans everything, the National Assembly had gradually converted itself into a French Parliament of olden days, that must leave all action to the Government, and content itself with growling remonstrances "post festum." [#4 After the act is done; after the fact.]”— Karl Marx, 18521

“This is not, in this case, to say that the world is ending. After the Feast is an acknowledgment of our fallibility, and of the fragile circumstances we find ourselves in.” (Liebowitz)

Transmitter is pleased to present Joshua Liebowitz’s immersive installation, After the Feast. An investigation into the physicality of data and the irrationality of human behavior, this installation is populated by a congregation of sculptural works that emanate a sense of self-sufficiency. Enveloped within a disorienting grid structure, we enter a reality suggestive of the post-human condition.

Umbra v2, a free-standing acrylic slab fabricated from data artifacts, and accompanied by a projection of its digitally rendered shadow, addresses the narrowing of the gap between the physical and the digital. In works such as Firmware Update and 2 Ohms and an Analog Displacement, the newly developed material graphene, marketed as both bullet-proof and highly conductive, is used to further explore this shrinking distinction, framing the urgency of our present moment in relation to the depletion of natural resources at the behest of technology fetishism, and mapping out potential technological responses.

Further focusing on one of our more recent harrowing data points, Devotion and Livestock visualizes the correlation between president-elect Donald Trump’s campaign donations and diseased meat and poultry. Default Settings, a 3D-modeled, digitally fabricated cube accompanied by mathematical notation and computer code in vinyl, remarks on the quantification of the everyday, and the internet of everything. 

Ultimately, utilizing logically sound algorithms to prove wildly illogical premises, these data visualizations and virtualized processes manifest into the physical world, contradicting the processes of abstraction to which they owe their existence.

Joshua Liebowitz’s work has recently been exhibited at the CAFA International Gallery (Beijing), Pioneer Works (Brooklyn), and Flux Factory (NY), among others. Liebowitz holds a BA in English from Columbia University and has studied and practiced Music Composition, Theory, and Poetry in addition to visual art. He currently lives and works in New York City, NY. 

1. Karl Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, New York: International Pub. Co., 1852