![\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Ruby-2-copy.jpg\")
Agent Ruby (detail graphic), 1996-2002. Courtesy of the artist and Paule Anglim Gallery, San Francisco, Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York and Waldburger Wouters, Brussels.<\/p>\n Agent Ruby (detail graphic), 1996-2002. Courtesy of the artist and Paule Anglim Gallery, San Francisco, Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York and Waldburger Wouters, Brussels.<\/p>\n
Entering Lynn Hershman Leeson\u2019s latest exhibition at Modern Art Oxford it\u2019s easy to see why she\u2019s been dubbed a pioneer when it comes to digital arts. \u2018We can use technology to help or hinder our lives\u2019, says the internationally acclaimed artist, \u2018I seek out or invent technologies that help ideas become real\u2019 in simple terms \u2018I invent tools that don\u2019t yet exist\u2019. With an exhibition that impressively manages to span her entire career the upper galleries are filled with installations, video projections, photo montages and simple sketches, a pleasing variety that gives weight to the main preoccupations of identity that run throughout this intrepid artist\u2019s work. \u2018I\u2019ve been making art for as long as I remember\u2019 Hershman Leeson notes, \u2018I never studied it, I just did it.\u00a0 But most of my family were scientists\u2019. In \u201cOrigins of the Species (Part 2)\u201d, the influence of this background is clear.<\/p>\n
With an incredible track record of being the first artist to use technological innovations in her work it\u2019s exciting to see such development in artistic practice placed in relative chronology. \u00a0However it is actually some of the apparently less advanced sculptures that are all the more striking for their sparing use of technology. The collection that pervades the upper gallery known as \u201cThe Breathing Machines\u201d (1965-70) present objects alongside tape recorded breaths, played out over and over, giving the sculptures an eerie presence to the point that one begins to wonder if something might burst out from within to engulf the entire exhibition. Another sculpture titled \u201cLunchbox\u201d sits proudly like a prop from a Beckett play, a wax cast of a mouth mounted in the depths of a metal lunchbox. The upsetting juxtaposition was designed as a social commentary connoting the commonplace brutality of domestic violence, a simple image but a striking one; it soon becomes evident that these brutal but precise observations are Hershman Leeson\u2019s currency.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Breathing](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Breathing-Machine-copy.jpg\")
Breathing Machine, 1967. Courtesy of the artist and Paule Anglim Gallery, San Francisco, Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York and Waldburger Wouters, Brussels.<\/p>\n
One piece, \u201cLorna\u201d (1983-4) \u2013 the world\u2019s first interactive video art disc \u2013 focuses the audience\u2019s attention on the object of the television. It\u2019s a work that feels like a modern version of one of those choose-your-own-story books, allowing the audience to determine the fate of the central character, this time through the medium of the screen and simple remote control. Storyboards for the piece line one entire wall with intricate annotations, a visual mapping of Hershman Leeson\u2019s obsessive tracking of the stories\u2019 varying strands, as each outcome is carefully considered. Similarly the records of her site specific performance piece \u201cThe Dante Hotel\u201d (1973) adorn an entire wall, photos and clippings once again reconstructing the past for the audience. These fragments, the paper trails that are left behind come to the fore. For the \u201cRoberta Breitmore Project\u201d (1974-78) the remnants almost overtake the project itself in which Hershman Leeson took on an alter ego. For \u201cBreitmore\u201d the artist changed her appearance, registered for credit cards, went on dates, she transgressed the boundaries of the systems we use to rule our lives in order to show the fragility of how we go about creating our identities in the 20th century. The remains of the life Hershman Leeson created become the very pieces we use to redraw and reshape her identity over time, the ripples of her actions overtake the actions themselves.<\/p>\n
![\"Installation](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Lorna-2-copy.jpg\")
Installation view of Lorna, 1979-1984. Courtesy of the artist and Paule Anglim Gallery, San Francisco, Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York and Waldburger Wouters, Brussels.<\/p>\n
You can feel a great fear in these paralyzing confrontations with the mechanisms of the modern world, wariness about the continually changing language of the digital sphere. Walking into one gallery the audience encounters pages and pages of script, a strange stage play dissected before our eyes of machine vs. human, the audience invited to participate as a sign invites us to \u2018Chat with Ruby\u2019. Machines seduce humankind, most obviously in the six-minute film \u201cSeductions of a Cyborg\u201d (1994) where we witness a girl becoming intoxicated by the screen. In a way, for a modern audience it\u2019s all too familiar, the dreamy look of love the girl gains as she begins to caress the computer before her, reminiscent of too many late night Netflix visits: she\u2019s hooked. As we recognise her addiction the film makes us wary of our own dependency on modern media and question the power of the screen in our own lives. In one shot the girl\u2019s pupils become screens, it\u2019s an image that feels all too well-known \u2013 who wasn\u2019t warned as a child they would get square eyes from staring at a screen all day long?<\/p>\n
With each \u2018dose\u2019 of the screen the girl\u2019s immune system suffers but she remains unable to stop, her body becomes \u2013 in the words of the narrator \u2013 \u2018a battleground of degraded privacy\u2019. The distortion and fragmentation of the body is clearly another overarching theme, stemming from the same concerns of how one formulates identity these worries manifest overtly in the \u201cPhantom Limb Series\u201d (1986-7). The collection of photo collages present female bodies that are blended with a stark ferocity in and out of cameras, monitors, cathode ray tubes, all reproductive machinery stuck into alien yet strangely captivating forms.<\/p>\n
![\"Glowing](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Cat-Infinity-Engine-copy.jpg\")
Glowing Cat from The Infinity Engine (detail), 2013-2015. Courtesy of the artist and Paule Anglim Gallery, San Francisco, Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York and Waldburger Wouters, Brussels.<\/p>\n
However it is the site specific installation of the \u201cInfinity Engine\u201d that steals the show, walking into the piece designed to mimic a genetic research lab, it feels more like entering a film set for a strange sci-fi, or embarking on a surreal scientific ghost train. The entire construction feels dystopian, a strange Brave New World hidden in the centre of Oxford\u2019s dreaming spires. It\u2019s evident that the piece was born out of a deep contemplation for Hershman Leeson: \u201cThinking about the most important aspects of being alive today, and understanding that programming the genome has resulted in a remarkable way of remaking life\u201d. It\u2019s evident she thrives off confronting and tackling these big subjects, boldly exploring the ramifications of experimentation with genetics and the fundamental dilemma of Man vs. Nature. \u201cI want to do art that makes a difference\u2019 Hershman Leeson confesses to Sleek. \u201cFor me politics and ethics are part of aesthetics\u201d.<\/p>\n
Text von Thea Hawlin<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n Lynn Hershman Leeson “Origins of the Species: Part 2” is on at Modern Art Oxford<\/a> 29 May until 9 August 2015.<\/strong><\/p>\n