Future Fair

For the Fall 2022 edition of Future Fair, we presented paintings by Ruth Freeman and sculpture by Damien Davis. Both artists embrace technology as a key tool for production and inspiration, interweaving digital processes into the core of their practice.

Damien Davis’s work questions how societies simultaneously code and decode representations of race through design and digital modes of production. His sculptures combine laser-cut plexiglass from his collection of computer-generated images. Vectors allow Davis to manipulate iconography into infinite permutations, catalyzing his assemblages and facilitating his investigation into the limits of representations in these base iconic forms.

Ruth Freeman’s work explores the relationship between chaos and order. Beginning with a detailed digital sketch, Ruth alternates between additive and subtractive layers of paint, interweaving these layers with hundreds of lines of tape in a masking process. She then allows chance to intervene, adding impromptu gestural brushwork in reaction and opposition to her previous marks. By stripping away the intricate masking interface, she creates a visually vibrating surface texture.

While Ruth’s hand is boldly asserted into the painting process by eschewing her digitally dictated sketch, Damien liberates his hand from the work by relying on software-generated vectors to bring his work to fruition.