Wax Chromatic
Charlie James Gallery is pleased to present Wax Chromatic, our second solo exhibition with Bay Area artist Alexander Reben.
Alexander Reben‘s interactive work Wax Chromatic, will premiere in Los Angeles at Charlie James Gallery, opening Saturday, July 15. In this control-by-oration installation, viewers will be able to transform the gallery’s environment by imagining and verbalizing almost any color imaginable. Upon speaking the name of their preferred hue, the room — as will the symbiotic relationship between humanity and technology — will be illuminated with the articulated color. Color is of particular interest to Reben, given its concurrent massless nature and profound visual impact, as well as its infinitely variable gradations. The work continues the artist’s exploration into how through intelligent manipulations of our surroundings, we are becoming ever-more integrated into our environments—and they in turn, are increasingly becoming extensions of ourselves. Reben’s solo exhibition Wax Chromatic runs through August 19, 2017, alongside the group exhibition Black is a Color, curated by Essence Harden, with works by Sadie Barnette, Adee Roberson, Lauren Halsey, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, Texas Isaiah, Azikiwe Mohammed, Nikki Pressley, and Patrick Martinez. An artist’s reception will be held Saturday, July 15 from 6-9pm.
Alexander Reben explores humanity through the lens of art and technology. His work deals with human-machine relationships, synthetic psychology, artificial philosophy and robot ethics among other topics. Using “art as experiment” his work allows for the viewer to experience the future within metaphorical contexts. His artwork and research has been shown and published internationally and he consults with major companies guiding innovation for the social machine future. Alexander has exhibited at venues both in the U.S. and internationally including The Vienna Biennale, MAK Contemporary Art Museum, The Vitra Design Museum, Ars Electronica, Volta, The Whitney Biennial, CERN, TFI Interactive, IDFA, ArtBots, The Tribeca Film Festival, The Camden Film Festival, Doc/Fest, and The Boston Cyberarts Gallery. His work has been covered by NPR, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Washington Post, Fast Company, Filmmaker Magazine, New Scientist, BBC, PBS, Discovery Channel, Cool Hunting and WIRED among others. He has lectured at TED, SXSW, TTI Vanguard, Google, UC Berkeley, SMFA, CCA, MIT and other universities. Reben is a graduate of the MIT Media Lab where he studied human-robot symbiosis and art. He is a 2016-2017 WIRED innovation fellow and a visiting scholar in the UC Berkeley psychology department.
Installation
