Team Gallery, New York Private Collection Lisson Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner
Catalogue Essay
“You open [Photoshop] up and there’s this paint bucket. If you click and hold it you get the gradient tool. Then you click up here and get to pick these different options. You drag it and it goes like this!” – Cory Arcangel
Co-mingling the current generation’s obsession with technology and creation, Cory Arcangel’s Photoshop CS brings computer programming and video games to the forefront of contemporary art. Executed in 2014, the present lot is part of the series Photoshop Gradient Demonstrations, which defined Arcangel as a ground-breaking artist intent on dissecting and commenting on contemporary visual pop culture. In these works, the artist utilizes modern technology to manipulate a digitized abstraction from a computer generated color gradient in Photoshop.
As technology constantly advances to fit people’s individual needs, Arcangel categorizes his unique works as both paintings and sculptures, challenging the idea of traditional art mediums and imagery. Operating within the lineage of appropriation, the artist uses found imagery from the media and illuminates these ordinary aspects of daily life as an expression of society. As such, Photoshop CS represents the artistic process of designing graphics to address media production integral to today’s society. Printed boldly on photographic paper, the colors move energetically as they fade from blue to pink to green across the large-scale print and envelope its viewers into a digital sphere.