The Emperor's New Aesthetic

Opening on September 18th at the Emmanuel Gallery on the Auraria Campus in Denver, is "The Emperor's New Aesthetic", co-curated by David Fodel and Matt Jenkins, Associate Professor of Art at Metro State University of Denver.

The show title references "The New Aesthetic" and the children's story by Hans Christian Andersen. The phrase 'Emperor's new clothes' has become a standard metaphor for anything that smacks of pretentiousness, pomposity, social hypocrisy, collective denial, or hollow ostentatiousness. The "New Aesthetic" is a term coined by James Bridle at SXSW Interactive in 2012, refering to a general set of principles and processes that speak to the proliferation of surveillance, high technology and control structures through art. It has become an overused and over-hyped term since that time.

The idea is to poke fun at the burgeoning institutionalization of "the new aesthetic", "post-internet" and "new-media" art in general, while still acknowledging the potential for cultural, political, economic and aesthetic intervention inherent in control of access / protocols / networks.

The show will include interactive technological objects, projection pieces, internet-based works, and 2D/3D objects from approx. a dozen artists, including international pioneers of Net.art, Glitch, and "digitalism" like Alexei Shulgin, Olia Lialina, Jon Cates, Phillip Stearns, Pox Party (Jon Satrom & Ben Syverson), Brian Kane, Sophia Brueckner, Jeremy Bailey, Nick Briz, VTOL, and Denver artists Mia Woody, Matt Evans and Sarah Knutson.
The show runs through October 24th and will feature a talk/performance by VTOL who is coming in from Moscow to be a part of this show, and MediaLive 2014, in Boulder in November.