Reena Spaulings, “Later Seascapes”, Galerie Neu. Courtesy the artists and Galerie Neu
It is Friday, 6 February, and Reena Spaulings’ exhibition entitled “Later Seascapes and Bohemian Groove” has opened at Galerie Neu in Berlin. Here, she is showing three of her “Later Seascapes” series and a “Bohemian Groove I”, four large-scale canvases of a robot vacuum cleaner’s algorithm turned into a contemporary interpretation of JMW Turner’s stormy sea paintings. Covered in messy converging paths of upmarket paint manufacturer Farrow & Ball’s “estate emulsions” in Mouse’s Back, Smoked Trout or Blazer, the paintings open up questions regarding the role of artificial intelligence in mechanical reproduction. The production line is no longer authorless; when iRobot Scooba 450 tells Reena “I’m finished with my job and ready for the next” in the press release, it has made a creative decision.
“South Korean woman’s hair ‘eaten’ by robot vacuum cleaner as she slept”, The Guardian reports on Monday. Reena Spaulings might read further: “The woman was sleeping on the floor of her home when the robotic cleaner ingested her hair leaving her in agony.” Reena now could fear that her iRobot Scooba 450 floor mopping robots she used to produce the paintings of Later Seascapes and Bohemian Groove series one early morning will also turn into two-eyed sea monsters and eat her hair.
Reena Spaulings, “Later Seascapes”, Galerie Neu. Courtesy the artists and Galerie Neu
Reena now might remember the article on the show “The Darknet” at Kunst Halle St. Gallen that appeared a few weeks ago: “Swiss Authorities Arrest Bot for Buying Drugs and Fake Passport.” The exhibition displayed items bought on the Darknet by an automated bot, one of which was a bag of ecstasy. The response from the authorities was apparently simple, yet strange in many ways: to arrest the computer. Reena wonders if her iRobot Scooba 450 made unforgivable aesthetic choices, would she be exempt from the consequences?
Reena’s probably there in the gallery observing the Berlin crowd. Reena’s eyes are brown? Blue? Something like that. Why describe her as beautiful? She’s not. Under the fierce neon light, she’s pre-aesthetic, revealed as fake or fictitious. As a character developed given the necessity of a continuous discussion about the state of art market and the twists of identity politics that follow.
But who is Reena Spaulings? Both gallerist and an artist, Reena Spaulings first appeared in 2005 as a character in collectively authored novel of the same title by Bernadette Coorporation. A story told by the multiple voices revealed Reena as “nobody who could be anybody becoming a somebody for everybody” and thus as a shell to embody questions of authorship and identity. Reena’s “Later Seascapes” continues this commitment to defying dominant forms identification .
Text by Egle Kulbokaite
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The exhibition “Later Seascapes” opened on February 6, 2015 and will be on view until March 7, 2015