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Exhibition

Auriea HarveyThe Unanswered Question

The Unanswered Question is Auriea Harvey’s second exhibition with bitforms gallery as well as a collection of digital murals presented in collaboration with Verse. The title is drawn from a number of sources: a piece of music by Charles Ives, a series of lectures by Leonard Bernstein, as well as one of the artist’s playlists. In Ives' instrumental score, the flutes act as the protagonist—a role Harvey identifies as a truth seeker questing for answers. The artist’s own unanswered questions occupy states of illusion to manifest scale, truth, violence, and fantasy.

Harvey’s practice exists in and between the real and virtual and The Unanswered Question situates both realms of existence on the same plane not as simulacrum, but as a suspension of disbelief. The series is presented in the gallery as printed murals and online as scrollable digital landscapes for viewers to magnify and uncover. Each work contains collaged polygonal models, the root of 3D scans, which are created using “kitbashing”, a technique from the practice of model-making that celebrates the simple lighting and highlights of each figure’s digital nature. This process offers the artist the opportunity to interject her personal scans into classical narratives.

Throughout the length of the exhibition, The Other Side, Spiritual Warfare, The Door, and The Tiger Hunt will be available as unique 1 of 1 NFTs via auction. The Sacrifice will be offered as an open edition for the length of the exhibition.

The Unanswered Question is Auriea Harvey’s second exhibition with bitforms gallery that debuts a new body of sculpture and digitally-collaged murals. Scale plays an important role within the collapse of these spaces, as physical sculptures are exalted to human height or hover in mid air while digital compositions are printed larger-than-life. Behind each sculpture, their printed likeness is echoed on the wall by swaths of collaged polygonal models. These models are the root of 3D scans and as such are also the origin of all works on display.
The exhibition is enveloped under the gallery’s static yellow light to simulate a semiconductor clean room, a sterile space made to manufacture electronics, as well as a sodium lamp, which is used to remove the color spectrum and render external environments black and white. In this way, the viewer is enveloped into the same incubator as Harvey’s sculptures.

Auriea Harvey, *Known Unknown*, 2024 Digital sculpture 16.25 x 12.25 x 26.63 in / 41.3 x 31.1 x 67.6 cm, framed Digital dimensions variable. Courtesy of Auriea Harvey and bitforms gallery. Photo: Tyler Rutledge

Auriea Harvey, Known Unknown, 2024 Digital sculpture 16.25 x 12.25 x 26.63 in / 41.3 x 31.1 x 67.6 cm, framed Digital dimensions variable. Courtesy of Auriea Harvey and bitforms gallery. Photo: Tyler Rutledge

AlleluiaAlleluia is a bronze sculpture situated atop a large, pyramidal plinth. Alleluia is a word used repeatedly during incantation to praise the lord. Harvey explores her fascination with this word as a bridge between the physical and divine body. The angel is composed from one wing of the Victory of Samothrace merged with a portrait of Harvey singing. The angel’s open mouth is echoed in the mural Spiritual Warfare and sits in good company amongst horse head figures from the Parthenon marbles and found models of chariots, zoomorphic columns, and primordial spears.
Collage and synthesis, another link between the real and virtual, are everyday dynamics within the artist’s life in Rome where antiquity and contemporary metropolitan life merge. The artist presents her frescoes as theatrical stage dressings ornamented with a collection of motifs frequently seen in her own sculptures; busts, doorways, roses, ornamented skulls, wings, wheels, and arrows meld into one another, overlapping in a pastiche of 17th century illusion. Anachronistic shadows cascade across each tableau in a charming contrast to the soft, low resolution models within each composition. Harvey’s practice is one of amalgamation; past becomes present, virtual becomes real, and utopia becomes war.

Auriea Harvey, *The Mystery v5 (ghost)*, 2024 Glass 7 1/2 x 9 x 7 1/8 in / 19 x 23 x 18 cm. Courtesy of Auriea Harvey and bitforms gallery. Photo: Tyler Rutledge

Auriea Harvey, The Mystery v5 (ghost), 2024 Glass 7 1/2 x 9 x 7 1/8 in / 19 x 23 x 18 cm. Courtesy of Auriea Harvey and bitforms gallery. Photo: Tyler Rutledge

Auriea Harvey, *Minomirror v1-dv1 (cancel)*, 2023 GLTF model in interactive HTML environment. Dimensions variable Edition of 3, 1 AP. Courtesy of Auriea Harvey and bitforms gallery. Photo: Tyler Rutledge

Auriea Harvey, Minomirror v1-dv1 (cancel), 2023 GLTF model in interactive HTML environment. Dimensions variable Edition of 3, 1 AP. Courtesy of Auriea Harvey and bitforms gallery. Photo: Tyler Rutledge

Harvey’s sculptures are born digitally, a state she references as the living, realtime version of the work. Known Unknown is presented within this native environment and demonstrates Harvey’s own confrontation with violence as an allegory where she must fight with both a lion and a tiger. However, in an attempt to address and express images of violence, a tableau of utopia emerged instead, in spite of the artist’s intention. Known Unknown contains luxurious color and rich dimension. Viewers are invited to witness the work as a truly 3D object on screen where a signal is sent to each pupil in a mimicry of 3D glasses. Once viewers observe the image in the round, they can then explore the piece with a mouse to zoom, pan, and rotate the sculpture.

Installation view of Auriea Harvey’s *The Unanswered Question*, bitforms gallery, 2024. Left to right: *The Tiger Hunt* (2024); *Dagger* (2024); and, *Dagger* (2024). Courtesy of Auriea Harvey and bitforms gallery. Photo: Tyler Rutledge

Installation view of Auriea Harvey’s The Unanswered Question, bitforms gallery, 2024. Left to right: The Tiger Hunt (2024); Dagger (2024); and, Dagger (2024). Courtesy of Auriea Harvey and bitforms gallery. Photo: Tyler Rutledge

The scroll is a key gesture of uncovering within Harvey’s practice that is mimicked by the expanse of a limitless digital landscape. The featured motifs are created with a technique from the practice of model-making called “kitbashing”, a type of 3D collage which aids in sculptural ideation. While they are expressed in the gallery both as murals and highly rendered prints, the artist considers their simple lighting and highlights as components of their digital nature. Fate and Constellation are metallic prints that depict several iterations of Harvey’s mythologies through fantastic busts, 3D scans, and digital constructions. Self-portraiture is an inherent feature within the artist's practice, as data captured by the artist of herself is incorporated into each composition. This process offers Harvey the opportunity to interject her personal history into classical narratives as a new world of lyrical arrangements where her sculptures commingle with and confront the history of art. Harvey’s murals are sold purely as digital landscapes via NFT that allow visitors to buy a piece of the exhibition. In collaboration with Verse, the digital murals are available online where they are presented larger than the web page itself in an insistence that viewers scroll, expand, and uncover the entire work. In confluence with the obelisk-like pedestals in the gallery, Harvey’s illusionistic bridges connect on-and-offline in a feedback loop of inquiry and discovery.

Artist

Auriea Harvey

Auriea Harvey is an artist living and working in Rome. Her work combines digital and physical processes to create sculptures in physical space and mixed reality. Drawing from her extensive experience in net art and video games in the collaborative groups Entropy8Zuper!, Tale of Tales, and Song of Songs, she brings a synthesis of personal narratives and character development to her sculptures ...

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Curator

bitforms

Founded in November 2001, bitforms gallery represents established, mid-career, and emerging artists critically engaged with new technologies. Spanning the rich history of media art through its current developments, the gallery’s program offers an incisive perspective on the fields of digital, internet, time-based, and new media art forms. Supporting and advocating for the collection of ephemeral...

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