Steven Cottingham
Like rats in the walls of the world
About the Artwork
In response to the politics of visualisation and surveillance, the media works of Steven Cottingham address the dubiousness of realism at a time when photographs are indistinguishable from computer-generated images. His Suspended Animation series explores this “postphotoreal” condition. Like rats in the walls of the world peels back the layers of the digital image, revealing wireframe scaffolding and shader passes beneath the thin veneer of verisimilitude. Its subjects – a bevy of rats clustered around a void, peering keenly into the darkness – wryly allude to our own relationship with emerging visual technologies as unwitting participants in an experiment. The luminous, phosphorescent colours in Cottingham’s piece suggest both the beautiful potential and uncanny disorientations of new image technologies.
Like rats in the walls of the world
2022
laminated inkjet print on styrene
Unique
43" x 26"
Estimate: $3,300
Courtesy the artist and Wil Aballe Art Projects, Vancouver
About Steven Cottingham
Steven Cottingham (b. 1989 Calgary, Alberta) is a visual artist and filmmaker whose practice critically examines the role of photoreal and simulation softwares in the domains of law, policy, and journalism. His video works explore bodycam policies, surveillance advertising, military simulation software, and the use of AI in prisons in order to analyze how emerging image technologies affect social behaviour. Cottingham’s recent exhibitions include ENTRE (Vienna, 2023), Catriona Jeffries (Vancouver, 2023), VRAL (Milan, 2022), Natalia Hug Galerie (Cologne, 2022), Artists Space (New York, 2022), The Polygon Gallery (North Vancouver, 2021), Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art (Kelowna, 2020), and Wil Aballe Art Projects (Vancouver, 2020). From 2021 to 2022 he participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program (New York). He received his MFA from the University of British Columbia (Vancouver) in 2017.
