Systems + other
sprawling projects
About
As a visual artist who likes to mess around with systems, my system inquiries range from the mildly lyrical—how can I make a fictitious map convincing?—to problem solving—how do I transform all my household trash into new, raw material? This work comes from a pleasure in discovering what's connected—and what's not—and why simple answers don't resolve anything.
Note on this website: I found it challenging, for years, to share my sprawling systems projects, mostly because I didn't get that I was working with sprawling systems. (This isn't (yet) a category on, say, grant applications, or in art departments.) When I figured it out, it was an epiphanic moment. I started to name the systems, and here we are.
Over the last several years, while printing textiles, I invented an analog system, Decision Fields. Through the actions of conscious agents, Decision Fields fosters the emergence of infinitely variable patterns on a plane. This has been my main focus since 2018, as I figure out how to describe and share it.
For certain projects, I assume an alter ego. Three exist as of this writing : Energy Being, Ymy Sfumato, and Riamir Pitillio. The latter two have their own (unpublished) comic strips. I occasionally perform "live manufacturing," as myself or as someone else.
Based in California, I've shown at museums and galleries in the US and abroad, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art and SFMOMA, which has one of my pieces in the permanent collection, Susanne Vielmetter, PØST-LA, and Pierogi. Residencies include The Watermill (Long Island), Cité des Arts (Paris), Kala Art Institute (Berkeley) and Stanford University Digital Art Center. In 2018, several drawings I created in the 1990s were in "Contraption" at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. I'm a 2020 LABA East Bay Fellow.
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Email: dym AT dymproducts DOT com
