Digital print on dibond
55 cm x 30 cm x 6 cm [21.7 x 11.8 x 2.4 in]
Edition of 13, accompanied by a signed and numbered certificate.
About the work
Katja Novitskova merges the natural world with the virtual by finding her source material online, reproducing it digitally and transforming into the physical via digital printing. Novitskova’s edition for the Whitechapel Gallery is one of her signature cut-out works, deriving from a visual sketch and printed directly on to di-bond - an aluminium composite material. Using image-editing software, Novitskova has collaged the image of a human brain onto the tentacles of a blue-ringed octopus to create a hybrid of cephalopod and anthropoid. The clusters of dots on the brain suggest the digital mapping of some kind of data. The overall image envisions a future of species adaptation and technological dominance.
Aluminium is the most abundant metal on earth but is almost never found in its elemental state. It’s reflective surface shines through the printed surface, giving the sculpture an iridescent quality and a futuristic, unmistakably manmade appearance.
Opting to take an image of an animal from the internet rather than from life, Novitskova is conscious of the way the natural world is mediated to us. The flatness of the cut-out sculpture references the digital screen through which we navigate the world now. Using a two-dimensional medium to portray what was once a three-dimensional body, the distinction between the natural world from its technological rendering is dissolved.
About the artist
Trawling through the digital sphere’s ‘ocean of signs’, Katja Novitskova (b. 1984, Estonia) creates immersive environments inhabited by a luminous bestiary. She is known for her dramatic, cutout images of animals at play with representations from financial and scientific sources. Her recent installation at the Whitechapel Gallery, Invasion Curves (27 June – 2 September 2018), presents a landscape overcome by a ‘biotic crisis’, where imaging and technology are used in a process of mapping the exploitation of life. Novitskova lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin.
Selected Exhibitions
Recent solo exhibitions and projects include Katja Novitskova: 洛基的城堡, curated by Victor Wang, Cc Foundation & Art Centre,Shanghai, 2017; Public Art Fund, New York, 2017; Greene Naftali, New York, 2016; Kunstverein Hamburg, Hamburg, 2016; Kunsthalle Lisbon, 2015; Salts, Base, 2014, and CCS Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson, 2012. Her work was also included in the 57th Venice Biennale, 2017, and at the Okayama Art Summit 2016.Recent group exhibitions at MoMA, New York, 2015, the 13th Biennale de Lyon, 2015, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, 2015, Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, 2014 and Fridericianum, Kassel, 2013. She was shortlisted for the 2016 Nam June Paik, Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany.
Whitechapel Gallery editions are generously donated by the artists. All proceeds from the sale of these works directly support our exhibition and education programmes. As is traditional in editions publishing, prices will rise as an edition starts to sell out.
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