Robin Eley: Loss/Less

Robin Eley | I'll be there one day/I believe it exists

101/EXHIBIT is pleased to announce its upcoming solo exhibition of new works by Robin Eley. An expansion of his previous body of work, Loss/Less walks the line between abstraction and figuration to explore the collision of our physical and digital identities. Eley takes this exploration further in his upcoming sho, featuring The Binary Project, which became a viral sensation as it explored what the internet would do to a portrait of his children.

As we become increasingly reliant on technology and meticulously crafted digital identities, we suffer a loss of our physical selves. Both identities become compromised as information is compressed, crushed, and sent flying across the web. Eley uses this loss as a form of creation, creating abstracted paintings referenced from video conversations between himself and his subjects to capture an open, honest display of identity in lieu of posed portraiture. Loss/Less is an exhibition comprised of over 24,000 tiles that have been painstakingly assembled, painted, disassembled, rearranged, and lost. Two portraits are combined into one, swapping information between the two, resulting in a glitch effect. What we choose to show to the world is recontextualized, recreating a digital phenomena in analogue fashion to represent the effect on our physical existence.

While Eley has been exploring the impact on our adult lives, he is also a recent first time father to twins. Titled The Binary Project, Eley created a 70"x70" painting to commemorate the moment of his children's birth, dismantled it, and scattered all 4,900 tiles across the globe through a Kickstarter campaign – destroying the original painting. Each recipient was asked to photograph their tile and email it to Eley, resulting in a new internet-filtered digital artwork. This piece, Binary.jpg, is comprised of accurate and inaccurate photographs, but also everything ranging from selfies to donuts. For Loss/Less, Eley has repainted the crowd-editted image at the original size of 70"x70", using his identity as both an artist and father to address the fears and explore the consequences of the internet on his artwork, and, symbolically, his children.

Loss/Less will be on view at 101/EXHIBIT from May 20 – July 14, 2017 with an opening reception on Saturday, May 20 from 7-9pm at 668 North La Peer Drive in West Hollywood.