Natalie Birinyi
New York, NY
ARTIST STATEMENT
For several years, I have generated imagery for paintings
and drawings using Google Maps, Earth, and Street View. These programs allow me
to channel various moods, emotions, and psychological content, often
unconsciously. To capture this imagery, I move through the programs like a
cyborg; genderless, bodyless, instrumentalizing the drone’s eye, looking for
glitches and screen grabbing them. Glitches are precious to me - they are the
moments that surveillance fails, and I invest them with the power and potential
to be anything. In this liminal space, we are not fixed by the computer eye.
What were once errors in the program become new landscapes that exist in a new
dimension.
I render these images in paint or pencil, trying to translate computer language into human hand faithfully, but allowing for inevitable slips. In my application of paint or pencil, soft, smooth strokes abut hard, taped lines, evoking both the freedom, expansiveness, and boundaries of digital space. I want the viewer to lose themselves in open spaces, then crash into a wall. I want them to be able to float through the city and feel comforted to see its strangeness laid bare. Through this process of working en plein air in the digital landscape, I invest these found images with physicality, forcing them to exist in the real world.
I render these images in paint or pencil, trying to translate computer language into human hand faithfully, but allowing for inevitable slips. In my application of paint or pencil, soft, smooth strokes abut hard, taped lines, evoking both the freedom, expansiveness, and boundaries of digital space. I want the viewer to lose themselves in open spaces, then crash into a wall. I want them to be able to float through the city and feel comforted to see its strangeness laid bare. Through this process of working en plein air in the digital landscape, I invest these found images with physicality, forcing them to exist in the real world.
BIO
Natalie Birinyi is a Brooklyn based artist. Birinyi received a BA from Columbia University and an MFA from Hunter College. She has been exhibited nationally and internationally including at the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Serbia, the CAFA Museum, Beijing, China, and an upcoming show at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, North Carolina. In 2015, she was commissioned by the Brooklyn Rail to create a permanent installation in 66 Rockwell Place, Brooklyn. She has received residencies at The Spruce (Indiana, PA), Residencia Corazón (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Hotel Pupik (Scheifling, Austria), and is currently one of the inaugural cohort at Silver Art Projects in downtown Manhattan.