Alice Anderson’s Spiritual Machines
The Anglo-French artist is presenting a set of totems, masks and statuettes at the Galerie Valérie Bach in Brussels
In Ray Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines, published in 1999, objects with artificial intelligence allow humans to transcend their biological limits. In Alice Anderson’s Kurzweil-inspired Spiritual Machines, on display at the Galerie Valérie Bach/La Patinoire Royale, objects with spiritual intelligence allow humans to go back to their primal origins.
These totems, masks and statuettes are the artist’s way of questioning the crux of our humanity nowadays. The copper-coloured wire she uses, with her self-developed weaving technique, symbolises the interconnectedness of today’s digital world. It also, as Anderson herself describes, allows her to “memorise” objects and architecture: the process is a way of drawing memory circuits in a physical way around objects, which transports her to a meditative state that involves rhythm and repetition. Given today’s fast-paced technological obsolescence cycles, when she feels an object may be phased out of our lifetimes, she memorises it with thread before it disappears altogether from the market.
This same meditative process gave way to Bodily Itineraries, a sculptural installation. The self-described “abstraction in space” is a temple with square elements, formed through bodily movements performed at different speeds —what Anderson calls “an alphabet of movement.” In addition, she’s also presenting a series of Pulse Drawings and Pulse Paintings, made using dematerialised red pastel scraped onto cloth through what looks like a full-body dance choreography.
Spiritual Machines and Bodily Itineraries are on display until March 17
Articles you also might like
For her second solo exhibition with Spazio Nobile Gallery, French artist Éva Garcia presents a body of new work based on her two practices: engraving, in dialogue and resonance with sculpture, as a shared vision of the state of the world. Weight, density and texture are omnipresent in a tactility that is both visual and haptic. The strength and fragility of elements such as the human body or rock enter into tension with the eye, provoking a profound emotion that is both total and fragmented. Taille Douce, includes large-scale prints and sculptures in both the main Spazio Nobile gallery and in the Studiolo across the street. The exhibition is on view through May 18, 2025.
The Institut Giacometti in Paris presents “Envisagement”, a new exhibition that places the work of the artist and filmmaker Ali Cherri in dialogue with Alberto Giacometti. The exhibition is on view through March 24, 2024.
Aldo Bakker contributed a carte blanche feature in the 2023 issue of TLmag39: The Culture of the Object, which included a text by Ernst van Alpen. This online version is an adaptation of the print.
For our S/S 2021 issue: TLmag35: Tactile/Textile/Texture, TLmag featured six contemporary artists who are using the traditions of weaving to create groundbreaking and innovative work.