Vera Molnar: What Matters is the Adventure: 2nd Floor Gallery

Van Doren Waxter is pleased to present What Matters is the Adventure, showcasing works by the pioneering computer artist, Vera Molnar (b. 1924 – d. 2023). Encapsulating five decades of Molnar’s career, What Matters is the Adventure shares works that have never been shown outside the artist’s studio, including her pre-computer hand drawings and collages, as well as her computer-generated works. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog with an essay by the curator and art historian, Isabelle Dervaux. 

 

At the center of this exhibition lies a challenging and pertinent question: What happens to art when the human way of thinking is perpetually affected by a computer? In the modern day, we interpret our lives through a digital calendar that organizes our schedule, and the pixelated images of people and products percolate into every aspect of our consumption. As one of the first artists to incorporate computers in her practice, Molnar’s work serves as a comprehensive example of art in the age of the computer.

 

Molnar’s practice grew from a strong foundation in geometric abstraction. Starting from Cubism learned through the works of Picasso and Braque, to the Concrete Art movement in Paris in the 1930s and the 40s, Molnar was visually inclined to geometry, and methodically inclined to modular systems. Before she gained access to a computer in 1968, Vera Molnar had already implemented algorithmic structures into image-making. When drawing with her hand, she imposed a set of rules with variable permutations, which led to a series of different images. Like throwing dice to decide the positions and colors of squares on a gridded canvas, the authority of chance remained, but it was partially transferred to the dice from the artist. This curiosity for automation developed into a collaborative practice when Molnar started using the computer. To instruct a computer as big as herself, with a mechanical arm that transported the blotter pen on top of paper, Molnar repeated the process of feeding an instruction, reviewing the results, and then modifying the instruction. The interventions of the artist were informed by the surprises that the machine delivered, which were images produced with alternating combinations of variables at a speed and accuracy that the artist could not accomplish on her own. Towards the computer-generated images, Molnar took aesthetic authority to determine which images incited a visual sensation. 

 

In Vera Molnar’s generative process, the computer is not an independent machine that creates art, but the result of human desire to explore every possible outcome. Through Molnar’s works, we reflect on the collapse of boundaries between art and science, and the ultimately human power to determine what moves us. 

 

Additionally, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to Laurence Shopmaker and Isabelle Spaak, who have been instrumental in seeing this exhibition to fruition.