Cory Arcangel Photoshop CS: 72 by 48 inches, 300 DPI, RGB, square pixels, default gradient “Blue, Red, Yellow”, mousedown y=21180 x=7200, mouseup y=860 x=7200; tool “Rectangular Marquee”, mousedown y=18000, x=0, mouseup y=21600, x=14400; default gradient “Blue, Red, Ye, 2021

A kaleidoscope of psychedelic colour radiates from Cory Arcangel’s large-scale work, enveloping the viewer in a realm where technology and abstraction collide. This is a quintessential example of the Photoshop Gradient Demonstrations series that anchored his reputation as one of the leading contemporary artists exploring the intersection of digital technologies and art. Since 2008, he has created works with the image-processing software Photoshop, using default gradient templates typically used for image backgrounds as a readymade. The title supplies the exact x and y coordinates of the gradients used, but Arcangel has repurposed this technology to create a work that deliberately pays homage to abstract painters such as Ellsworth Kelly.

Challenging the idea of authorship and the status of the art object, he transforms the dematerialised computer image by printing it on photographic paper to the highest technical standards and exposing it to laser, before mounting and framing the work. As Arcangel explains of the series, ‘I think about them as paintings, because they refer to the history of painting... I also have to think about them as sculptures, because every part of the process is part of the project’.