Opening Reception: 8 September 2017 @ 19.00
Running from 9/9/17-29/9/17
Exgirlfriend Gallery
Holsteinische Str. 18, 12161 Berlin
contact@exgirlfriendberlin.com
For his first solo show in Berlin, Christopher Meerdo explores various modes of subjugation and subversion relative to our asymmetrical relationship with networked technologies.
This new body of work is derived from circumventions of restricted and administrative areas accessed through the dark web. More specifically, the recent projects 'White Hot' and 'Blaze/Chill' are augmentations of files derived from hidden systems designed to collect and control bodies as subjects for metadata analysis.
For White Hot, photogrammetry modeled sculptures sit atop their corresponding United States Air Force drone videos. The videos, accessed through TOR channels, reveal testing and training procedures being implemented on US citizens. This includes the practice targeting of individuals outside a medical care center and on a long combination vehicle (LCV) semi truck. The term “white hot” is commonly used by Remotely Operated Aircraft Sensor Operators; the etymology stemming from the bright white representation of body heat when viewed with interfered targeting scopes mounted to drones as part of Multi-Spectral Targeting Systems.
The resulting sculptures, originating from the video frames, are deconstructed using a slicing technique and reconstructed by hand. Each sculpture is hydroprinted with collages derived from images collected during the researching of the project.
Using similar methods of retrieval, the series Blaze/Chill is an excerpt from a collection of roughly 5400 infrared photographs produced by embedded facial recognition (EFR) security cameras. International in scope, the resulting photographs from this specific camera system uses a database of stored facial profiles to create unique identifiers for workers to gain building access or to log in and out of work each day. Similar to Workers leaving the Lumière Factory, here the camera has shifted from a casual observer, to being instrumentalized as a method of control and subjugation through highly precise individualized administration.
Christopher Meerdo (b.1981) is a Chicago based artist who grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Lithuania. Meerdo’s work was recently featured in a year-long solo exhibition at the Mattress Factory Museum of Contemporary Art. He is the Fellowship 15 International Award winner for his projects Iceland and Cataphote, was an artist in residence at the SIM Program in Reykjavik, Iceland and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2013. Meerdo received his MFA in Photography from the University of Illinois at Chicago and currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent and forthcoming exhibitions include The National Gallery of Kosovo, The Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago, IL); CocoHunday (Tampa, FL); Floating Museum (Chicago, IL), Cabinet Magazine (Brooklyn, NY); LVL3 Gallery (Chicago, IL), Second Street Gallery (Charlottesville, VA); SIM Gallery (Reykjavik, Iceland) and a traveling exhibition in Birmingham and Leicester, UK. Meerdo is represented by DOCUMENT Gallery in Chicago.
More information can be found at http://0-0.ooo/