Curated by Steve Dietz

Organized by MOCA Cleveland

ON VIEW in the Marjorie Talalay, Peter B. Lewis, and Video Galleries

ARTISTS ON VIEW: Cory Arcangel, Bruce Charlesworth with Colleen Ludwig, R. Luke Dubois and Lián Amaris, Kota Ezawa, Genevieve Grieves, Shih Chieh Huang, Jane D. Marsching and Mitchell Joachim/Terreform, Piotr Szyhalski, and Marina Zurkow.

Selected from the 2nd 01 San Jose Biennial: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge, Superlight presents the work of artists from around the world working at the intersection of art and digital culture. Superlight presents art that lightens but does not make light of the seemingly intractable problems facing us. The exhibition is a serious look with a light touch at such issues as the effects of a globalized economy, global climate change, and resistant colonialism, to the near universal experience of a failed or unbalanced relationship. The artists in the exhibition employ humor, popular culture and the hybrid, virtual reality that we increasingly inhabit to create works that aerate and illuminate. They embrace ambiguity as an elemental life force. They b elieve passionately in their issues without being heavy or polemical.

The art ranges from Bruce Charlesworth’s computer-generated curmudgeon who interacts with the visitor, to Luke Dubois and Lián Amaris' never-ending film of a woman getting ready to go out, to Shih Chieh Huang’s magical kinetic sculptural installation of consumer detritus. Also among the works on view are Jane Marsching’s operatic visualization of temperatures at the North Pole over the course of the next 100 years; Kota Ezawa’s stripped down renditions of the Ikea catalogue as a critique of consumer culture and pop psychology; and the Australian Aboriginal artist Genevieve Grieves’ imaginative "do over" of the colonial gaze.

All of the work in Superlight shares a certain affinity for the glossy culture in which we live at the same time that it questions where slick, high tech visions of the future are actually leading us. Situated at the nexus of creativity and technology, the art in Superlight reflects the supercharged collision between innovation, the way things are now and an irrepressible need to re-imagine what matters most in what’s next.

IN THE VIDEO GALLERY: Future Films

A broad range of innovative work in the realm of the moving image featuring a selection of machinima (films made using video game engines), animations, DIY Hollywood productions, micro cinema, surveillance cinema, Second Life vignettes, mash-ups, and fan films from around the world.

FEATURING ARTISTS>> Peggy Ahwesh, Daniel Garcia Andujar, Denis Beaubois, Giselle Beiguelman, Kota Ezawa, Douglas Gayeton, Claudia Hart, Jonn Herschend, Aaron Koblin, Ahree Lee, Thomson + Craighead.

Superlight is curated by Steve Dietz, Artistic Director of the 2nd 01SJ Biennial: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge. The Biennial, organized by ZERO1: The Art and Technology Network, is a multi-venue, multidisciplinary exhibition in San Jose, CA which is the largest and most significant platform in North America for the presentation of work at the intersection of art, technology, and digital culture. The exhibition in Cleveland is coordinated by Margo A. Crutchfield, Senior Curator.

Artists' Websites:

Cory Arcangel

http://beigerecords.com/cory/index.html

Bruce Charlesworth

http://www.brucecharlesworth.net/

Colleen Ludwig

http://www.colleenludwig.com/

R. Luke DuBois

http://www.lukedubois.com/

Lián Amaris Sifuentes

http://www.lianamaris.com/

Shih Chieh Huang

http://www.messymix.com/

Jane D. Marsching

http://www.janemarsching.com/

Mitchell Joachim / Terreform

http://www.archinode.com/

Marina Zurkow

http://www.o-matic.com/

Kota Ezawa on the Evolution of His Drawings:

http://www.sfmoma.org/multimedia/videos/312