FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 2020
Search Engine Artist Gretchen Andrew remakes the internet (and the world) IN HER IMAGE
Gretchen Andrew, artist-in-residence at Gazelli Art House, reveals new series of work and hosts conversations with women about the future of art, technology, and culture
Los Angeles, CA – Search Engine Artist and Internet Imperialist Gretchen Andrew, best known for her playful hacks on major art world institutions—the Turner Prize, Whitney Biennial, Art Basel, and Frieze Los Angeles—is unleashing a new series of work that actively reprograms the artificial intelligence underlying the global internet. These new works, referred to as “vision boards,” appear as top results through her unique process of using the failures of the internet to make her own dreams come true.
Gretchen has a background in information systems and apprenticed with famed British painter Billy Childish. Her current practice features her signature vision boards—mixed media paintings—which appear as top search results through her unique search engine manipulations. The feminine and trivialized materials of these vision boards are meant to clash with the male-dominated worlds of AI, programming, and political control in the digital age.
As artist-in-residence for the month of May at Gazelli Art House, Gretchen is revealing new vision boards that are a part of her “Cover of Artforum” project alongside others that envision futures that range from what she wants to do after self-isolation to the next American president. AI is inherently backward-looking and susceptible to being reprogrammed through knowledge of the internet’s structure. Gretchen exploits this, rewriting existing representations of reality with her dreams by using a search engine’s own rules and limitations against itself. The “Cover of Artforum” project directly confronts the limitations of AI with human desire, turning Gretchen’s personal desire to be on the cover of the leading art magazine into a digital reality. Hint: Google “cover of artforum” and select images and it will be as if she is indeed on the cover of Artforum.
These vision boards and search engine projects take over Gazelli Art House’s digital platform, Gazell.io, and coincide with an interview series. In Her Image is a series of accompanying conversations with women who work in a variety of disciplines and who, in their individual ways, are building the future in their own image. In these conversations, Gretchen doesn’t so much ask how being a woman has impacted their work, but rather who they are, what they care about, and how that creates the worlds they work in. Throughout the month, Gretchen will be speaking with Penny Woolcock (filmmaker), Sarah Ivy (filmmaker/boxer), Ema McKie (artist/model/mother), Tracy Bartley (director at R.B. Kitaj Studio Project), Lindsay Thompson (animator), Niki Montazaran (Hollywood agent), Lauren Suen (inventor), and Penny Slinger (artist).
You can see a full schedule of Gretchen’s conversations and view them as they are published online here.
About Gretchen Andrew
Gretchen Andrew is a Search Engine Artist and Internet Imperialist who programs her vision boards to manipulate the internet with art and desire. She trained in London with the artist Billy Childish from 2012-2017. In 2018, the V7A Museum released her book Search Engine Art. In 2019, she famously “hacked” the Frieze Art Fair in Los Angeles by manipulating Google Images into making her work appear as top search results. She lives and works in Los Angeles.
About Gazelli Art House
Gazelli Art House is a commercial gallery with a wide range of international artists, presenting a broad and dynamic programme to a diverse audience through global public projects and exhibition spaces in London and Baku. Gazelli Art House was founded in 2003 in Baku, Azerbaijan where it held exhibitions with Azeri artists. Having hosted conceptually interlinked off-site exhibitions across London, founder and director Mila Askarova opened a permanent space on Dover Street, London in March 2012. In 2017, the redesigned gallery space reopened in Baku, with an ambitious annual program showcasing both local and international artists.
Representing artists Aziz+Cucher, Derek Boshier, Stanley Casselman, Francesco Jodice, Recycle Group, Kalliopi Lemos, and Niyaz Najafov amongst others, the gallery has built a diverse program of artists working across sculpture, photography, painting, video, performance and virtual reality. As part of the gallery’s on-going commitment to art education, the gallery publishes catalogues and artist books, alongside its programme of Tuesday Talks (one per show) to address ideas within the exhibitions and encourage a deeper dialogue around them.
In 2015, the gallery launched its Digital Art House www.gazell.io, an online residency for artists working in the digital and virtual reality realm. On an annual basis, curated shows titled “Enter Through the Headset” are held to feature a select few from the previous residents in the physical space of the gallery. Committed to building a market for VR works as a medium, the gallery keeps an archive of all previously shown works within the residency and from the group shows. To mark the fifth year anniversary of the physical group shows, the digital library will become available via the installation of a permanent headset in the gallery.
In 2012, the gallery launched the Window Project utilising the facade of the gallery as an additional frieze-style display platform. Since 2015, the initiative has been repurposed to specifically support art school graduates through open call competitions three times a year. Art school partnerships have also been held with schools including Central Saint Martins and Royal College of Art, where the open calls are announced within these schools.
