Petra Cortright | micro lemon diamond realm
07.07.23 - 26.08.23
For her first solo exhibition in Auckland, Starkwhite presents a group of significant works by Los Angeles-based artist Petra Cortright. Following on from the presentation of key paintings and videos with the gallery in 2020 and a solo presentation at City Gallery, Wellington in 2017, this exhibition will offer New Zealand audiences the most extensive look at the unique paintings of Cotright to date.
First becoming renowned for making self-portrait videos that use her computer’s webcam and default effects tools, which she would then upload to YouTube and caption with spam text, this amalgam of techniques and image sourcing is still at the heart of her practice. Preoccupied with the creation and distribution of digital and physical images using consumer or corporate software, Cortright densely layers the appropriated information combined with custom digital brush strokes into captivating digital paintings and moving image works. Her paintings on aluminium and acrylic within this exhibition begin as endlessly modifiable digital files — playing with the aforementioned images and techniques, but at a “decisive moment” they are translated into the two-dimensional objects presented before you. They become finite, yet their range of motifs and marks, and their disorienting perspectives and dimensions suggest dynamic change.
Cortright lives and works in Los Angeles; she has exhibited at a number of American institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2014); CCA: The Center of Contemporary Arts, Sante Fe (2011); Chelsea Art Museum, New York (2007); MCA Chicago (2015) and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2019). She has also exhibited extensively across the world, including: Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing (2014); Lab for Emerging Arts and Performance (LEAP), Berlin (2014); Espai Cultural Caja Madrid, Barcelona (2011); Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) (2015); Kunsthaus Langenthal, Switzerland (2015) and Kunstlerhaus Bremen, Germany (2015). Cortright participated in the 10th Biennale de Lyon and the Venice Biennale’s Internet Pavilion (2009)s and The New York Underground Film Festival in New York (2008).