Alex Sutcliffe, Syncing Matter: Between Canvas and Screen

Sutcliffe, Alex, White Lines, 2022, UV ink on Dibond, 16 x 20 in., Courtesy of the artist and Studio Sixty Six

Virtual and physical are often perceived to be at odds with one another, as two opposing realms, and incompatible time frames. Alex Sutcliffe’s amalgamation of digital and physical processes merges the virtual and tangible, re-thinking representation by treating the canvas both as a flatbed of information and as an illusory device. [1]

Halifax-based visual artist Alex Sutcliffe’s most recent solo exhibition, Syncing Matter, was on view at Studio Sixty Six, Ottawa, from September 2 to October 22, 2022. In Syncing Matter, Sutcliffe’s body of work raises questions about the relationship between the digital and the physical image, more specifically about the nature of representation, and the notions of time and perceivable space in connection to the image plane.

Sutcliffe, Alex, Yellow Head, 2022, Acrylic and UV ink on panel, 24 x 30 in., Courtesy of the artist and Studio Sixty Six

Sutcliffe produces his work through an array of processes. Currents (2022), incorporates text-to-image A.I. models and Alex's own digital painting and collage methods, the final digital image is then printed onto a hand-painted, textured surface with a specialized printer. In the case of Yellow Head (2022), art historical references found on Google Images are collaged together, printed on canvas, and then directly painted on with oils. White Lines (2022), consists of digitally programmed textures and marks that are printed onto Dibond with 3D UV ink. Lastly, Trees (2022), features a process where Alex manipulates the digital images of his painting on a screen, which are then re-enacted on the surface of the canvas. The common ground for this body of work is the synthesis of the digital and the physical processes.

Sutcliffe, Alex, Currents, 2022, Acrylic and UV ink on panel, 30 x 40 in., Courtesy of the artist and Studio Sixty Six

With the exception of Currents, which features the representation of a hand, holding a portable screen that seems to act as a source, emanating light, lines, possibly text, motifs, and visual data, Sutcliffe’s works appear to be aniconic. [2] Works featured in Syncing Matter accentuate Alex’s oscillatory digital/physical process which deals with the abstract nature of digital information and visual data. This aniconism suggests the presence of posthuman networks of great power. In Alex’s case and on a pragmatic level, these are generative adversarial networks (GANs) which are algorithmic architectures powering AI content generators. Through the application of various algorithms, text-based AI image generators (or GANs), utilize semantic analysis to interpret the artist’s written commands, derive meaning, and synthesize visual data in response. As Alex interacts with these AI techniques, the networks practice alongside the artist, training and learning with each generated image.

While Alex’s works might seem purely abstract at a glance, these works encompass a multitude of content that is hinted at but never described by way of likeness. The matrix of virtual visual data is conveyed through images resulting from previously mentioned A.I. image generators, representations of screen distortions, and glitches. Painting’s historical trajectory and formal concerns are acknowledged with fragmented art historical references. Images that are possibly photographic make subtle appearances at times: a houseplant, a microwave, a mug, or a case of apples, as though random unprompted results slipped through the filter of a web browser image search. These slight and cunning touches remind us of the impossibility of accessing the virtual through the actual- we are still situated in the realm of representation, whatever the degree of abstraction in Alex’s non-illusory images. [3]

It is the union between Alex’s formal process and the content of his work that situates his practice at the median of the window/screen duality. [4] While the window refers to the medium of painting’s illusory capacities that aim to represent and depict the natural world and serves as a vertical architectural device modelled after our experience with space, the screen image contains on its surface a cluster of visual information that is not meant to be viewed from a specific perspective. The screen model isn't necessarily related to human posture as a window or a painting would be, but instead constitutes a horizontal table of information, varia of vocabularies, culmination, and record of visual data. [5] Sutcliffe’s works appear to be designed after the screen model, yet they also act as windows into our current-day digital screens. They constantly reorient themselves, confusing us; they connote grids, topographic maps, and visualizations of data networks, while also containing an illusory luminosity, one that an actual digital screen would emit.

Sutcliffe, Alex, Grey Matter, 2022, UV ink on Dibond, 24 x 30 in., Courtesy of the artist and Studio Sixty Six

During our talk, Alex points to the dizzying effect the digital picture plane has; without any chronological traces, the digital plane condenses visual data, collapsing time. When observing a static digital image, the viewer is not able to tell which visual element preceded or followed the other during the creation process of the image, as its visual elements situated on the digital screen have no volume, and only operate on an x-y axis. In their relationship to the digital image, the viewer dissociates from their concept of time and space due to the singularity of the picture plane. The feeling of disorientation or “dizziness” Alex touches on is preserved in his works, as the digital content is transmitted onto the actual surfaces. Screen distortions and glitches, pixels, lines without distinguishable beginnings or ends, all connoting the magnitude of information found on the web, disorderly and fast, neutral, and impersonal, without rhythm, dissonant. Amongst all this visual information, we come across a painterly mark alluding to the presence of the painter, trying to situate the analog medium and the painter among “the accelerating rate of image consumption”, and in the current digital age. This visual information is at times found coating manipulated images of historical masterworks (Missed II, Currents), referencing the rich history of painting and representation, and pointing in the direction that the medium is headed in. 

But Alex’s process is not an act of resistance, it is one of investigation and navigation, existential almost; by transferring the digital visual data into the actual, his works question the notions of time and space that exist both within and between the digital and physical picture planes. While Sutcliffe’s works extend these questions, the physicality of his surfaces offers volumetric layers of planes that contain marks of airbrushed paint, washes, thick slabs, and layers of paint that have been cut into, revealing preceding layers, allowing for the possibility of a chronological reading. Sutcliffe is able to distill spatiality from his digital subject matters as his material process is informed by the formal visual qualities of these images.  In return, the materiality of his process embeds these images with sequentiality, charging them with a sense of time. By engaging with these works in actual space, the viewer, to an extent, can retrace Sutcliffe’s steps by reading into the layers of his surfaces, re-grounding themselves in their relation to the digital image. 

Navigating the dizzying virtual realm, the endless seas and composites of visual data found on the web, Alex Sutcliffe’s compelling works situate painting between canvas and screen, as an illusory device and repository for information. [6] Alex analyzes the tangibility and temporality of the virtual via his methods, seeking to actualize the abstract nature of visual data. Through his eclectic processes, his practice advances the discourse on the evolution and adaptation of the medium of painting, expanding its horizons.

Alex Sutcliffe, BFA (2020), is an emerging visual artist based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Alex was born and raised in Chicago before moving to Ottawa at eleven years old. He has exhibited work throughout Halifax, Ottawa, and Toronto including the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Art/Toronto, and the Anna Leonowens Gallery. Alex’s work has been acknowledged by awards such as a 2022 Canada Council for the Arts Concept to Realization Grant, 2021 Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Grant, the Bank of Montréal’s 2020 1st Art! Competition, the 2019 Margo and Rowland Marshall Award for Painting as well as a two-time recipient of the Robert Pope Foundation Painting Scholarship.

Check out more of Alex Sutcliffe's work on his website or on Instagram.

Alex is part of a group show which is set to take place in 2024, at the City Hall Art Gallery, Ottawa. We look forward to seeing how Alex develops his experimental processes.

Alex Sutcliffe in the studio, 2022.

Notes

1 Jakub Zdebik, Deleuze and the Map Image (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019), 22.

2 Laura U. Marks, Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art (Cambridge: The MIT, 2010), 5.

3 Zdebik, Deleuze and the Map Image, 109.

4 Ibid., 22.

5 Ibid., Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 265.

6 Ibid.,23.

     Bibliography

Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

Marks, Laura U. Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art. Cambridge: The MIT, 2010. 

Zdebik, Jakub. Deleuze and the Map-Image.: Aesthetics, Information, Code, and Digital Art. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019.