Techspressionist Salon 94
Live from Chicago!
Four Techspressionist Artists // 150 Media Stream // Chicago
Thursday, May 1, 2025
VIDEO PROGRAM
00:00:00 – Colin Goldberg // History of Techspressionism
00:13:00 – Tommy Mintz // Hello Chelsea Exhibition Preview
00:19:22 – Yuge Zhou // Curator Introduction
00:21:15 – Yuge Zhou // About 150 Media Stream
00:27:15 – Yuge Zhou // Installation Tour / Curator Q&A (Video Walkthrough: Colin Mason)
00:45:30 – Colin Goldberg // Interior Lanscape
00:48:25 – Renata Janiszewska // Souffles Pastels (Pastel Sighs)
00:53:10 – Karen LaFleur // Mycorrhizal
00:59:46 – Jan Swinburne // SONIC FLIGHT: Towards Peace
01:05:42 – Q&A // Moderated by Renata Janiszewska
01:11:00 – Closing Remarks // Renata Janiszewska
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
150 Media Stream is proud to present “Four Techspressionist Artists”, a new exhibition of four video works by four leading voices in the Techspressionist movement: Colin Goldberg, Renata Janiszewska, Karen LaFleur, and Jan Swinburne.
Using a dynamic blend of digital media, motion graphics, and abstract visual language, these four artists work at the intersection of technology and expression. Despite vastly different aesthetics, the exhibition’s four pieces all represent unique perspectives into the essence of Techspressionism, a global, community-driven art movement that embraces technology as a tool for emotional and aesthetic exploration.
The exhibition will be on view April 28 – July 20, 2025, in the lobby of 150 North Riverside Plaza, with a public event for the exhibition on Thursday, May 1st. Free to visit and consisting of a 150-foot LED wall, 150 Media Stream is a public digital art installation curated by Chicago-based video artist Yuge Zhou.
ABOUT 150 MEDIA STREAM
Located in the lobby of 150 N Riverside Plaza in Chicago, the 150 Media Stream is a public digital art installation divided into 89 LED blades. It stretches over 150 feet long and reaches 22 feet high, the largest structure of its kind in the city. Launched in 2017, the 150 Media Stream has showcased over fifty commissioned works by emerging and renowned local and international media artists.
Curated by Chicago-based video artist Yuge Zhou, the 150 Media Stream Arts Program forges strategic partnerships with many of Chicago’s major academic and artistic institutions, providing a forum for students and cultural practitioners to exhibit and promote their work in a dynamic and iconic environment.
COLIN GOLDBERG
Bronx-born artist Colin Goldberg’s work propels the trajectory of Expressionism into the 21st century. As an undergraduate student, the artist studied painting under the noted Abstract Expressionist painter Angelo Ippolito. Goldberg, who is a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant recipient, coined the term Techspressionism in 2011 to describe his technology-fueled paintings.
In 2020, he initiated the formation of an artist group around the idea with fellow artists Steve Miller, Patrick Lichty, Oz Van Rosen and art historian Helen A. Harrison, the longtime director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs, New York. Goldberg is recognized for his ongoing role in developing the community of artists that forms the core of this international movement. The community, currently comprised of artists from over 45 countries, continues to grow through the use of the term as a hashtag on social media, with over 80k Instagram posts currently using the hashtag #techpressionism.
In 2022, Goldberg’s large-scale augmented-reality work Kneeling Icon was acquired by the Hearst Corporation. It is the first AR work in the Hearst collection and is permanently installed in Hearst Tower in Manhattan. The artist’s work has been featured in WIRED, The New York Times and PBS. and resides in numerous private, public and corporate collections.
RENATA JANISZEWSKA
The elements of Janiszewska’s art are both computer-generated and decorated with digital paintings which are drawn by hand with a stylus on the screen of her device. These elements act as characters in the mise en scene made using multiple apps. There is layering, cutting out, blending, superimposition and doubling of material to produce still images or animated loops. Recursivity and chance play a part. She edits these like an early hip-hop artist: connecting the loops using simple mobile editing software. Janiszewska composes and records her own soundtracks.
The DIV quality of her working method frees her tremendously to express her emotions, as a good Techspressionist does. The apps allow her to complete and share work quickly, facilitating experimentation. Hybridization allows for multiple techniques to be used and the file travels through numerous formats in a trice. Some of her themes are bio degradation,altered states of perception, temporal erosion and feminism.
Her works are in both Canadian and international collections. Selected exhibitions at Kingsborough Art Museum, NY,Southampton Arts Centre, NY, Cotuit Centre for the Arts, MA, University of Wisconsin, Patchogue, NY and the Cape Cod Museum of Art, MA.
Janiszewska lives in Lion’s Head, Canada.
KAREN LAFLEUR
Karen LaFleur is a Techspressionist artist, writer and animator. Her work explores the interplay between interior and exterior worlds with a focus on adaptability. She reveals vulnerabilities in complex relationships and highlights resiliencies in these ever-shifting landscapes.
LaFleur creates fine art moving images that unfold a complex mixture of 2D and 3D blended imagery. Since 1981 she’s trained in various applications transferring her traditional art skills into moving images that dance across the screen.
Movement is an integral part of LaFleur’s creative process whether digitally rendered or traditionally captured. Her pencil drawings on vellum form a base for her moving image works and include the tiniest of details. Each piece is then digitally painted and animated in a variety of applications to create a world of color, shape and movement. Her skill in visual storytelling combined with Nancy Tucker’s narrative music, brings her moving image works to life with a sense of story rhythm that enriches the work’s believability.
Exhibits Include: Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC, Fuller Museum MA, Union Square San Francisco CA, Hudson Valley MOCA NY, Cotuit Center for the Arts Video Wall MA, MOCA L.l.ghts NY, Cape Cod Museum of Art MA, MOWNA, NYC, The Wrong Biennial, Southampton Art Center NY, Kingsborough Art Museum, Brooklyn NY.
LaFleur lives and works on the island of Cape Cod, MA
JAN SWINBURNE
Jan Swinburne’s intermedia practice overlaps images, sculpture, and experimental moving image art in two streams: gallery oriented exhibitions, and time based experimental forms. Her thematic focus revolves around speech, language as landscape, degenerated and regenerated images and sounds.
Swinburne has screened/exhibited internationally in Greenwich England, New York City, Brooklyn (Brooklyn Art Museum), (Experi MENTAL Festival 6), New Jersey(Filmideo/lndexArt Centre),South Hampton (TECHSPRESSIONISM: Digital & Beyond), Washington DC (RhizomeDC), Croatia ( fu:bar 2k23) and in Canada (MUFF, Vector, Art On The Screens, Trinity Square Video, Photophobia, Pleasure Dome TNW tour, Long Winter and more). Her sonic works have been published in The Wire Magazine and through Alrealon Musique record label.
Swinburne works and lives in Toronto, Canada.
WHAT IS A TECHSPRESSIONIST SALON?
Techspressionist Salons are a time and place in cyberspace where artists gather once a month to hang out, share their work and discuss matters relating to art, philosophy, and technology.
These meetups were conceived as a modern counterpart to the Surrealist salons of the 1920’s, in which artists could meet informally to socialize and discuss ideas. Techspressionism is a 100% volunteer-based international artist community.
The First Techspressionist Salon was held on September 1, 2020, and included artists Colin Goldberg, Patrick Lichty, Steve Miller and Oz Van Rosen, as well as art historian Helen Harrison, Director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, the former home and studio of painters Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. During this first Salon session, the working definition of Techspressionism was decided upon by the participants as: “An artistic approach in which technology is utilized as a means to express emotional experience.”
Artist Davonte Bradley (aka DAVO) proposed the idea of recording the Salons and publishing them on the Techspressionism YouTube Channel, which was implemented starting with Salon #8.
Salons are moderated by a rotating panel of artist volunteers. After the recording ends, artists are welcome to hang out for the afterparty (aka advisory board meeting), in which the topic for the next Salon is decided upon, and other community-related ideas are discussed.
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