WHAT IS TECHSPRESSIONISM?

Techspressionism is introduced as a new art-historical term to describe fine artists using digital technology to convey subjective, emotional content.

Techspressionism distinguishes expressive fine art from such genres as “digital art,” which can include animated movies, and video games, as well as from “new media” works that do not embody convincing artistic intent.

The subjective lens of the individual artist (rather than the product of a corporate studio) is what connects Techspressionism to its predecessor, Expressionism. Expressionists presented the world from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically in order to evoke moods or ideas, seeking to express their emotional experience rather than physical reality.

A core group of artists have begun working together to develop momentum for the adoption of the term Techspressionism into common usage. We meet biweekly at our Techspressionist Salon artist meetups on Zoom to discuss art and technology. Further information on the origins of the term Techspressionism is available here.

The Techspressionist Manifesto, a document that draws inspiration from artistic manifestos of the past (including Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto and Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto) is a open-ended document subject to ongoing revisions from group members.

We encourage artists who identify with the approach of using technology as a means to express emotional experience to self-identify as Techspressionists by including the hashtag #techspressionism on Instagram, Twiter, and other social media platforms.

We are actively reviewing images using the hashtag on Instagram and Twitter and reposting a curated selection of these works. Artists whose work is reposted are invited to be included in an online index of Techspressionist visual artists.

– Anne Morgan Spalter, January 2021, Brattleboro, VT, USA.

techspressionism

/tek-spresh-uh-niz-uh m/

An artistic approach in which technology is utilized as a means to express emotional experience. (1)

ROOT WORDS (source: Oxford Dictionaries):

expressionism: A style of painting, music, or drama in which the artist or writer seeks to express emotional experience rather than impressions of the external world.
technology :The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry.

Techspressionism: Curators in Conversation with Christiane Paul and Helen A. Harrison is the first of a series of Roundtable Discussions created by Techspressionist artists. This conversation is a discussion focusing of Techspressionism as it relates to art-historical movements of the past as well as to digital art at large.

Christiane Paul is Professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School, as well as Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She is the recipient of the Thoma Foundation’s 2016 Arts Writing Award in Digital Art, and her books are A Companion to Digital Art (Blackwell-Wiley, May 2016); Digital Art (Thames and Hudson, 2003, 2008, 2015, 2023); Context Providers – Conditions of Meaning in Media Arts (Intellect, 2011; Chinese edition, 2012); and New Media in the White Cube and Beyond (UC Press, 2008). At the Whitney Museum she curated exhibitions including Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art 1965 – 2018 (2018/19), Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools (2011) and Profiling (2007), and is responsible for artport, the museum’s portal to Internet art.

Helen A. Harrison, a former New York Times art critic and NPR arts commentator, is the director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in East Hampton, New York. A specialist in modern American art, she has been the curator of the Parrrish Art Museum and Guild Hall Museum and a guest curator at the Queens Museum. Her books include Hamptons Bohemia: Two Centuries of Artists and Writers on the Beach, monographs on Jackson Pollock and Larry Rivers, and three mystery novels set in the New York art world.

Bronx-born artist Colin Goldberg’s work explores the relationship between technology and personal expression. His studio practice bridges multiple disciplines, notably painting and digital media. Goldberg first used the term Techspressionism as the title for a solo exhibition in Southampton NY in 2011, and curated the first large-scale group exhibition of Techspressionist works, Techspressionism: Digital and Beyond at Southampton Arts Center (Southampton NY, 2022).

Art in Focus

Illustrated talks that illuminate the world of art.

Hosted by Helen Harrison

The videos below are a series of talks organized in conjunction with the exhibition, Techspressionism: Digital & Beyond, at the Southampton Arts Center, April 21 – July 23, 2022.

These talks were co-sponsored by Stony Brook Southampton Library, the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, and the Southampton Arts Center and made possible by support from the John H. Marburger III Fund of Stony Brook University.

Helen A. Harrison, the director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in East Hampton, is the former curator of the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton and Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton. She has also been a guest curator at the Queens Museum in Flushing, has taught at the School of Visual Arts, and currently holds an adjunct faculty position in Stony Brook University’s Department of Art. From 1978-2006, she wrote art reviews and feature articles for the Long Island section of The New York Times, and she was the visual arts commentator for WLIU 88.3 FM, Long Island University’s NPR-affiliated radio station, from 2004-2009. Her articles, essays and reviews have appeared in numerous scholarly and popular publications, and she’s the author of several books, including, most recently, two mystery novels set in the New York art world.

FOCUS: Digital / Analog Hybrids

Tuesday, May 3, 2022 via Zoom

Anne Spalter
Rhode Island School of Design

Anne discusses how she used cutting edge artificial intelligence to create new types of compositions–but unexpectedly ended up using familiar drawing and painting tools to realize her final works in Techspressionism: Digital and Beyond.

Digital mixed-media artist Anne Spalter is an academic pioneer who founded the original digital fine arts courses at Brown University and RISD in the 1990s and authored the internationally taught textbook, The Computer in the Visual Arts (Addison-Wesley, 1999). Her artistic process combines a consistent set of personal symbols with a hybrid arsenal of traditional mark-making methods and innovative digital tools. A new body of work, further developed at a recent residency at MASS MoCA, combines artificial intelligence algorithms with oil paint and pastels. She is currently creating NFT artworks.

FOCUS: What the Heck is Techspressionism?

Tuesday, May 17, 2022 via Zoom

Colin Goldberg
Artist/ Curator of “Techspressionism: Digital & Beyond”

Colin coined the term Techspressionism in 2011 to describe “an artistic approach in which technology is utilized as a means to express emotional experience.” Since then, it has evolved into an international movement, with periodic online meetups, modeled on the 19^th century salon concept, in which artists share their works and personal creative philosophies. Colin will discuss Techspressionism’s genesis, survey its present flowering, and imagine its potential.

Colin Goldberg was born in the Bronx, New York, to parents of Japanese and Jewish ancestry, both Ph.D. chemists. His grandmother Kimiye was an accomplished practitioner and instructor of Japanese Shodo calligraphy. He has been a freelancer in NYC advertising agencies, coding and designing some of the web’s first consumer-facing sites and launching brands such as Snapple, GOLF Magazine, and Popular Science online. He holds a BA in Studio Art from Binghamton University and a MFA in Computer Art from BGSU, and is a recipient of grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts.

FOCUS: Responding to Techspressionism

Tuesday, May 31 via Zoom

Shimon Attie
Bergman Visiting Professor, Stony Brook University

In his artistic practice, Shimon uses both traditional and experimental media, including immersive multiple-channel video and other digital tools. He will respond to the exhibition in light of technology’s expressive potential for re-imagining relationships between space, time, place, memory and identity.

Shimon Attie is an internationally renowned visual artist whose work spans photography, video, site-specific installation, public projects, and new media. A recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation’s Lee Krasner Award, he was awarded The Rome Prize in 2001, a Visual Artist Fellowship from Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advance Study in 2007, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008. He became the inaugural Bergman Visiting Professor at Stony Brook in the fall of 2020.

Some recent posts from our Instagram feed are below. Many thanks to our Instagram curator, Renata Janiszewska. Follow our official account @techspressionism and the hashtag #techspressionism on Instagram.