Exhibition: Computational Art Pioneer Vera Molnár at the Beall Center
Exhibition
Serie interruptions
Beall Center for Art + Technology on the UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts campus
University of California, 712 Arts Plaza, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, UC Irvine
Irvine, US 92697
April 2 - August 27, 2022
The exhibition will include over 80 works by Molnár, the largest one-person show of her work in the United States!
French artist Vera Molnár is one of the pioneers of computational art, with her practice dating back to the mid-to-late sixties. In 1968, Molnár began to write programs to execute her computer-generated works, in which the code is the medium. Using different numbering systems to create her work, Molnar gives up control by writing a proscribed set of procedures that moves the plotter pen to create a drawing. This exhibition will focus on her creation of a series of results from the same program. She varies the drawings by utilizing either a linear progression, variations on a theme, or the progression from order to chaos.
The computer allows her to create a multitude of scores and systems that yield series with ever-new permutations. These variations in her drawings and works in other media constantly produce movement—a musical, kinetic play of line and form. As one of the only computational artists who trained in art before using a computer, and among just a handful of women who innovated these new methods, Molnár continues to generate variations and surprise the audience in her artistic practice today at age 98.
This year, Vera Molnár will exhibit a set of computer drawings from the 1970s at the 159th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale of Art, in the general exhibition The Milk of Dreams which will be running from April 23 to November 27, 2022; she will be the oldest artist participating in the Biennale. In 2023, she will be in a group exhibition curated by Leslie Jones called Coded: Art at the Dawn of the Computer Age, 1960-80 at LACMA in Los Angeles.
The Beall Center is an exhibition and research center located on the campus of the University of California.
When: April 2 – August 27, 2022
Where: Beall Center for Art + Technology on the UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts campus, University of California, 712 Arts Plaza, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, UC Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697
Admission to the exhibit is free.
Fore more information, please visit the Beall Center website.
The Vera Molnár exhibition was made possible with generous support from Etant donnés Contemporary Art, a program of Villa Albertine and FACE Foundation, in partnership with the French Embassy in the United States, with support from the French Ministry of Culture and the Institut français.
