Petra Cortright

Last updated

Petra Cortright
Petra Cortright.jpg
Cortright in 2008
Born1986 (age 3738)
NationalityAmerican
OccupationArtist
Movement Internet art, Post-Internet, painting, digital painting, video art

Petra Cortright (born 1986) is an American artist working in video, painting, and digital media.

Contents

Biography

Petra Cortright was born in 1986 in Santa Barbara, California. [1] Cortright is the daughter of two artists; her father who died when she was four, [2] Steven Cortright, was a sculptor/printmaker and art professor at UC Santa Barbara, and her mother is a painter. [3] She studied at California College of the Arts in San Francisco (2004) and Parsons The New School for Design in New York (2008). [4] She lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She first came to notice through her self-portrait videos that she uploaded to YouTube.

Video works

Cortright is well known for her video works presented on YouTube and in gallery environments. Her videos playfully explore formal properties of video software and the representation of physical bodies in digital spaces.

In vvebcam (2007, collection, Museum of Modern Art), Cortright filmed herself while playing with the special effects features built into the webcam software used to make the video. [5] On Saturday, December 10, 2011, vvebcam (2007) was removed by YouTube because of Cortright's extensive use of "offensive" key words. [6] "Vvebcam is a portrait of the artist as a computer user whose primary mode of existence is recording and being watched". [7]

In 2011 Cortright collaborated with Ilia Ovechkin to create Video Catalog, a work where the monetary value of her videos is determined by an algorithm based on YouTube views. [8]

Vicky Deep in Spring Valley (2012) marks the beginning of Cortright's video work with virtual strippers. Cortright lifts the dancing girls from VirtuaGirl, a software that makes chroma keyed footage of "strippers" available for download. These videos are layered against flash images of fantastical digital worlds that are reminiscent of animated desktop wallpaper. [9] A 2015 exhibition at Depart Foundation in Los Angeles titled Niki, Lucy, Lola, Viola included cropped_masked_final, a new video work incorporating characters sourced from VirtuaGirl. [10]

Cortright was selected to participate in the 2013 Frieze Art Fair in London where she produced her self-portrait, Bridal Shower (2013), [11] a film where she experiments with the physical qualities of a production studio. [12] The film was subsequently broadcast on British public television station Channel 4.

In 2014, Cortright began a collaboration with fashion designer Stella McCartney, creating a series of videos where Cortright uses glitches and video manipulation to showcase and contrast patterns on the garments designed by McCartney that she models. [13]

Digital paintings

In 2011 Cortright had her first solo exhibition, So Wet, organized by Gerardo Contreras at Preteen Gallery in Mexico City. Digital images created on the computer were printed on fabric and loosely hung on the walls evocative of the, onshore breeze, warm winters and cool summers of her hometown Santa Barbara. These were unlike previous online works. They were out of context and yet characteristic of a new generation of Post-Internet artists. [14]

Cortright continued to assemble collages on the computer, layer on layer, from images found on-line, through raster image manipulations and the addition of painterly digital brushstrokes. The intricate paintings which blend figurative and abstract elements, are printed on a variety of materials—most frequently linen, paper, and aluminum. Each of Cortright's paintings begin with a digital file that the artist refers to as a "mother file," which consists of hundreds of layers that are subsequently printed on a substrate [15] through industrial print processes. [16] Often her works are titled to reflect file names and extensions, as well as search terms used to source found imagery. [16]

Feminism in work

According to Petra Cortright, she is a feminist by virtue of being a woman but she prefers to not have her work condensed to that categorization. [17] Nonetheless, Cortright has a wide range of work that involves her playing with female stereotypes using readily available consumer software to produce "selfies". [18] This was before selfies became ubiquitous and made her videos precursors to the smartphone era. In her early works, Cortright used tags like "vagina", "boobs" and "butts" to gain viewers. [19]

Selected exhibitions

Cortright's works have been shown at the New Museum in New York, [20] Rhizome, the Venice Biennale, [21] the 2010 01SJ Biennial in San Jose, California, [22] and the 12ième Biennale d'art contemporain de Lyon. [23] Her work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Péréz Museum (Miami), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), the Moderna Museet (Stockholm), the MOTI (Breda) in collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Kadist Foundation (San Francisco), BAMPFA (Berkeley, CA), and the San Jose Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Cortright's work was included in Paddles On!, the first auction dedicated to digital art hosted by a major auction house (Paddle8, July 2014). [24]

Awards

In 2015 she was awarded Rhizome's Future-Proof award with Paul Chan & Badlands. [25]

Personal life

Cortright is married to Marc Horowitz. They have one child. [26]

See also

Post-Internet

Related Research Articles

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captions, stated in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed text. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they", addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, consumerism, and sexuality. Kruger's artistic mediums include photography, sculpture, graphic design, architecture, as well as video and audio installations.

Cheri Gaulke is a visual artist and filmmaker most known for her role in the Feminist Art Movement in southern California in the 1970s and her work on gay and lesbian families.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Webcam model</span> Livestream video performer

A webcam model is a video performer who streams on the Internet with a live webcam broadcast. A webcam model often performs erotic acts online, such as stripping, masturbation, or sex acts in exchange for money, goods, or attention. They may also sell videos of their performances. Once viewed as a small niche in the world of adult entertainment, camming became "the engine of the porn industry," according to Alec Helmy, the publisher of XBIZ, a sex-trade industry journal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cornelia Sollfrank</span> German cyberfeminist artist

Cornelia Sollfrank is a German digital artist, she was an early pioneer of Net Art and Cyberfeminism in the 1990s.

Rhizome is an American not-for-profit arts organization that supports and provides a platform for new media art.

Jennifer Kaye Ringley is an Internet personality and former lifecaster. She is widely regarded as the first camgirl. She is known for creating the popular website JenniCam. Previously, live webcams transmitted static shots from cameras aimed through windows or at coffee pots. Ringley's innovation was simply to allow others to view her daily activities. She was the first web-based "lifecaster". She retired from lifecasting at the end of 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy Buchanan</span> American artist

Nancy Buchanan is a Los Angeles-based artist best known for her work in installation, performance, and video art. She played a central role in the feminist art movement in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Her work has been exhibited widely and is collected by major museums including the Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou.

Tiffany Holmes is an American new media artist and educator. She is based in Chicago, Illinois.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lauren Cornell</span> American curator

Lauren Cornell is an American curator and writer based in New York. Cornell is the Director of the Graduate Program at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and Chief Curator of the Hessel Museum of Art. Previously, she worked at the New Museum for twelve years and was the executive director of their affiliate Rhizome (2005-2012).

Angela Washko is an American new media artist and facilitator based in New York. She is currently associate professor of art at Carnegie Mellon University. Washko mobilizes communities and creates new forums for discussions of feminism where they do not exist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Post-Internet</span> 21st century art movement

Post-Internet is a 21st-century art movement involving works that are derived from the Internet or its effects on aesthetics, culture and society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juliana Huxtable</span> American artist

Juliana Huxtable is an American artist, writer, performer, DJ, and co-founder of the New York–based nightlife project Shock Value. Huxtable has exhibited and performed at a number of venues including Reena Spaulings Fine Art, Project Native Informant, Artists Space, the New Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and Institute of Contemporary Arts. Huxtable's multidisciplinary art practice explores a number of projects, such as the internet, the body, history, and text, often through a process she calls "conditioning." Huxtable is a published author of two books and a member of the New York City–based collective House of Ladosha. She is on the roster of the talent agency Discwoman, a New York based collective and talent agency that books DJs for parties and events around the world. She previously lived and worked in New York City, and has been based in Berlin since 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lindsay Howard</span> American curator

Lindsay Howard is an American curator, writer, and new media scholar based in New York City whose work explores how the internet is shaping art and culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martine Syms</span> American artist (born in 1988)

Martine Syms is an American artist residing in Los Angeles, specializing in various mediums including publishing, video, installation, and performance. Her artistic endeavors revolve around themes of identity, particularly the representation of the self, with a focus on subjects like feminism and black culture. Syms frequently employs humor and social commentary as vehicles for exploration within her work. In 2007, she introduced the term "Conceptual Entrepreneur" to describe her artistic approach.

Yreina Cervantez is an American artist and Chicana activist who is known for her multimedia painting, murals, and printmaking. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, and her work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Mexican Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.

Amalia Soto, known as Molly Soda, is a Brooklyn-based internet performance artist. Soda works across a variety of digital platforms, producing selfies videos, GIFs, zines, and web-based performance art, which are presented both online and in gallery installations in a variety of forms. Molly Soda's work explores the technological mediation of self-concept, contemporary feminism, cyberfeminism, mass media and popular social media culture. Molly Soda is the co-editor with Arvida Byström of the 2017 book Pics or It Didn't Happen: Images Banned from Instagram.

Signe Pierce is an American artist. She has worked in performance, photography, video and digital art. Her works have been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, at the Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum in New York, and at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ed Fornieles</span> British artist (born 1983)

Edward Fornieles is an English artist. Fornieles uses film, social media platforms, sculpture, installation and performance to express the interaction of family, relationships, popular memes, language and the subcultures of the 21st century. His work operates within immersive simulations, which construct and enact alternative political and social spaces. His projects often involve cultural, social, and infrastructural production.

Sue Williams is an American artist born in 1954. She came to prominence in the early 1980s, with works that echoed and argued with the dominant postmodern feminist aesthetic of the time. In the years since, her focus has never waned yet her aesthetic interests have moved toward abstraction along with her subject matter and memories. She lives and works in New York.

Sylvia Salazar Simpson is an installation and book artist as well as a photographer. Born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she was raised in Mexico City, Mexico. In the mid 1960s, upon her arrival to Los Angeles, she began her trajectory toward the arts. Her works deal with social commentary on women and the female body, as well as the use of organic and perishable items.

References

  1. "Foxy Production – PETRA CORTRIGHT". foxyproduction.com. Retrieved June 2, 2019.
  2. "Why Should A Webcam Plus A Woman Equal Sex? For Petra Cortright, It's Art". July 10, 2018. Retrieved April 10, 2021.
  3. "An Interview with Internet Artist Petra Cortright in Los Angeles, California". Arteviste. Retrieved April 11, 2021.
  4. "Petra Cortright | Ever Gold [Projects]" . Retrieved June 1, 2019.
  5. "VVEBCAM". Rhizome.
  6. "YouTube Art Project 'VVEBCAM' Censored Because of Its Tags". HuffPost. December 16, 2011. Retrieved May 10, 2018.
  7. "Petra Cortright VVEBCAM 2007" . Retrieved April 6, 2021.
  8. "Petra Cortright Video Catalog at DOMENICO QUARANTA". Archived from the original on August 14, 2011. Retrieved April 11, 2011.
  9. Wagley, Catherine (July 8, 2015). "Petra Cortright Is Merging Art and the Internet – Using Virtual Strippers". L.A. Weekly.
  10. Greenberger, Alex (July 20, 2015). "Flash Dancers: Petra Cortright on Her New Show at the Depart Foundation". ARTnews. Retrieved June 23, 2018.
  11. Sulcas, Roslyn (October 16, 2013). "Frieze London Makes Way for the Unexpected". The New York Times.
  12. "Frieze Art Film's Petra Cortright Experiment: Fall In Love Here". October 21, 2013.
  13. "Stella McCartney Collaborated With the Internets New Favorite Artist". The Cut.
  14. "so wet, petra cortright at Preteen gallery Mexico City". April 9, 2011. Retrieved April 10, 2021.
  15. "In Focus: Petra Cortright". December 2, 2019. Retrieved April 10, 2021.
  16. 1 2 "Petra Cortright". Art in America. Retrieved June 23, 2018.
  17. "Petra Cortright on selfies and the feminist question" . Retrieved April 10, 2021.
  18. "Our ten favourite digifeminist artists". January 20, 2014. Retrieved April 10, 2021.
  19. Sayej, Nadja (February 26, 2018). "petra cortright turns camgirling into feminist art". i-D. Retrieved March 9, 2021.
  20. "New Museum :: NewMuseum.org". www.newmuseum.org. Archived from the original on November 30, 2007.
  21. "The Internet Pavilion at the Venice Biennale | Beyond The Beyond". www.wired.com. Archived from the original on June 2, 2009.
  22. "Petra Cortright – 2010 01SJ Biennial". 01sj.org.
  23. "Artistes de l'exposition internationale".
  24. "Digital Art in the Contemporary Market". Bryson Estates. Retrieved May 10, 2018.
  25. "Photos from Future-Proof, a Benefit for Rhizome Honoring Petra Cortright + Paul Chan & Badlands UnlimitedT". Rhizome.org. Retrieved April 11, 2021.
  26. "Petra Cortright & Marc Horowitz's Chic Picnic Wedding in Santa Barbara". Harpers Bazaar.

Bibliography