CURATED: TRAVESS SMALLEY

Travess Smalley is an artist working with computation to make generative image systems. He is interested in painting software, computer graphics, digital image-making, and drawing.

Selected exhibitions include Travess Smalley, Foxy Production (forthcoming 2023); Des champs de fraises pour l’éternité, La Galerie, centre d’art contemporain de Noisy-le-Sec, Noisy-le-Sec, France (2022); Minecraft Language Edition, Ender Gallery in collaboration with MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, SK, Canada (solo); Pixel Rugs, Arcade On Stadium, Provo, UT (solo)(both 2021); Downtown Painting, Peter Freeman Inc., New York, NY (2019); and Standing Still, Lying Down, As If, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit, MI (2018-2019); What is a Photograph?, International Center of Photography, New York; and Public Interfacial Gesture Salon, Bard Center for Curatorial Studies, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2011).

In 2014, he was included in Forbes 30 Under 30 for his work as a digital artist.

Travess Smalley (b. 1986) lives and works in Providence, RI. He holds a BFA from The Cooper Union, New York, NY, and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI.



Get in touch for additional information about available works. 

Inquiry

ARTIST

EXHIBITION

Title

Pixel Rug Drawing Summer 2021  - 01

Pixel Rug Drawing Summer 2021 - 02

Pixel Rug Drawing 10_30_22_02

Pixel Rug Drawing 10_31_22_06

PIXEL RUGS by Travess Smalley is a series of pen plotter drawings on paper. 
like an icon, like a punch card weaving, like an LCD screen, like a game asset, like a rug in my minecraft house
Pixel drawings constructed in Photoshop. Scripted and subsequently rendered with a pen plotter in black ink on cream card stock paper. The drawings are letter size and warm. Drawn with a ball point pen, the impression in the paper shows irregularities. Some pen lines are darker, others lighter. The ink pools in certain spots. It fades in others. The drawings present the dogged mechanical consistency, precision, and symmetry of the pen plotter along with the errors or misalignments the artist and environment bring to that system. Much like a photocopier or a compressed jpg, the limitations of the pen plotter codes in new textures and new readings: topographical, corroded, and outlined.
Working with grids of pixels as small as 8 x 8, the works are experiments in pattern and repetition within the the tight black and white pixel constraint. As the project evolved the pixel density increased and resulted in more complex forms that still recall their gridded origin.
The drawings reference abstracted ideas of pixels that extends back thousands of years – a continuation of the pixel matrix from ancient mosaics to the animated game sprite.

Pixel Rug Drawing 06_22_22_05

Pixel Rug Drawing 10_31_22_02

The exhibition presents pioneers from different generations, early 1950s until today, working in the field of generative art. On view will be, among others, plotter drawings, generative photography, sculptures, and NFTs from 30 international artists. In collaboration with ELEMENTUM.ART.

Do not miss this and save in your calendar:

TRAVESS SMALLEY

ART

EXHIBITION