Multimedia artist Christiane Peschek constructs her environments as spaces of potential interaction between the organic and the technological, human and artificial intelligence. From sound to smell, from object to image, her work plunges the public into a sensory confusion, beginning with the visual confusion created by many of her digital images.
In its latest exhibition, "Liminal Ghosts," presented by Sanatorium at the Diana Gallery in New York, retouched images float in a space crisscrossed by dots against a gray background. The bodily evocations—faces, hands, teeth, jewelry—detach themselves from their materiality. The series draws inspiration from the digital and identity fatigue symptomatic of a world overstimulated by images and networks, where the line between reality and virtuality is blurred. In these images, bodies fade into indistinctness, reminiscent of spirit photographs from the turn of the 19th century.e century, while the background grid captures them like the matrix of a working software, affirming their material of accumulated pixels.
Post-binary environments
Peschek works with digital images like one sculpts wax for her organic evocations. In her installations, she challenges us on the fluid form of our identities and the possibility of an organic, post-binary construction of identity. Often, the spaces she presents echo a certain pan-cultural ritual: here, specters; there, a spa or public baths—spaces of care often referred to by the artist as "retreats." In her installation Oasis It offers a potential sanctuary for non-binary corporealities, where water is a central element, permeating forms between sound sculptures and the viscosity of images. With EdenThe smartphone is creating a new concept of spiritual retreat.
Combining visual and material elements, physical and virtual immersion, corporeality and technological interface, the artist invites us to embrace these queer connections that technology intuitively allows.
