Denis Gillingwater

ARTIST STATEMENT

“The threats we face are even more fundamental as surveillance capitalist take command of the essential questions that define knowledge, authority, and power in our time: Who knows, Who decides. Who decides who decides?” – Shoshana Zuboff, “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power”.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Either photographing actual sites of “watched environs” through extensive international travel, accessing them through CCTV surveillance systems situated through the world, or online via numerous media websites, the work’s intent is for developing a broadly based digital imagery bank addressing the breadth and depth of our highly surveilled societies. The intrigue with these systems is how their sourcing aligns perceptually and conceptually with numerous concerns and issues regarding civilian life, law, and order. The rapidly expanding (un)known and/or (un)wanted penetrations of surveillance technologies into the mental and/or physical realms within our everyday being inevitably invades and reconfigures our individual and collective lives. Surveillance Capitalism is a new species of power Ms. Zuboff tags as “instrumentarianism”. Its power knows and shapes human behavior towards other’s ends. It works it will through the automated medium of an increasingly ubiquitous architecture of “smart” networked devices, things, and objects”.

Actual surveillance monitor imagery is often blurred, fractured, and/or loaded with “digital noise”.These characteristics are embraced visually and conceptually by me. This is particularly true of nighttime imagery. It can lend elemental degrees of intrigue and mystery (“film noir ambiguity”). Some of this website’s images intentionally offer themselves as alternatives to highly refined digital photography so revered at present. Also, some of the images can serve as metaphors regarding the instability and precariousness of the human condition no matter how “technologically advanced” we become in contrast to the continual “dumbing down” attempts of our political, racial, and cultural environs. The incorporation of the CCTV’s monitor fronts in some of the photographs is for “framing” them to heighten the socio-psychological presence of surveillance in our lives. It is also a partial take on the adage of “the medium is the message”. In the end, the photographs are intended to raise questions as to what is seen, or at times more importantly, not seen behind the walls, doors, and windows of the watched environs. The CCTV monitor’s screen and the human eye incorporated into some of the photographs represent the point/plane of intercurrence between our inner sense of being in conflict with our surroundings frequently altered with ever-expanding uses of newer technologies. This not only is through surveilling cameras, but facial/eye recognition, digital fingerprinting, data banking, and various other developing means. Aligned with this is why who and/or what is pictured and what are the image’s surveillance cameras observing and for what purposes. Other considerations could arise as to what and where are the boundaries of surveillance regarding issues of public safety and individual privacy rights along with what are the socio-psychological implications individually or collectively in a society. At times, the work questions the often hidden agendas by the powers that be through portrayals or through surveillance technologies situated in the everyday confines of our urban environs. As the artist Rene Magritte stated decades ago: “Everything we see hides another thing and we always want to see what is hidden by what we see”. Lastly, in the end, my desire is to have the photographs maintain themselves as highly visual in a fine art kind of photographic context.

The emphasis of my career’s work for twenty five years was in site-specific sculptural installations, mono-prints, and photography. At times, the installations included the two types of prints along with the incorporation of CCTV surveillance systems that monitored the prints and the viewers looking at them. Since 2008, the work’s focus shifted towards individual photographs. In 2008 and 2010, artist residences took place at The American Academy in Rome. Their purpose was for capturing images related to the new world insertion of surveillance equipment into the old world architectural, political, and cultural realms of Rome. Since 2011, the subsequent work has taken on a much broader approach. However, it is still highly based in surveillance oriented imagery. While the photographic representations within this website contain three images from the Rome residencies, the vast majority represent much more current work of the last six years. (For images of work related to my earlier years of site-specific installations and prints, please refer to my other website: http://denisgillingwater.viewbook.com.

BIO

Born in Los Angeles (1946) though mostly raised in Chicago and New York City. Classes were taken at the Children’s Art Workshops of the Chicago Art Institute and Museum of Modern Art. A BFA and MFA were earned from the University of Cincinnati. One of five professors to institute one of the first interdisciplinary arts program in the United States at Arizona State University and currently an ASU Emeritus Professor. Works of art are in over seventy collections including the American Academy in Rome/Photographic Archives and Dia Art Foundation/Artist Books/NYC. Gallery representation is with the Filter Photo/Gallery in Chicago. The more recent group exhibitions of work were in at the Durden and Ray Gallery in Los Angeles in 2018. Its exhibition title: “For the Public Record: Art in the Age of Mass Surveillance”. During 2018 and 2019 work was in a traveling exhibition commemorating the 60th anniversary of the ACLU in Arizona. The title was: “In This Together”. Work was also shown in the Arizona Biennial 2020 at the Tucson Museum of Art. The Filter Photo Gallery in Chicago juried work into five shows the last few years. Also, two group exhibitions during 2022 at Spazei Millepiani/Loosenart.com in Rome titled “Surveillance Society” and “Open Theme”.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS AND SHOWS

New Museum of Contemporary Art/New York City
Irish Museum of Modern Art/Dublin
Center for Contemporary Arts/Santa Fe
Bartlett School of Architecture/UCLondon
Phoenix Art Museum
Arizona State University Art Museum/Tempe
Scottsdale Center for the Arts/Arizona
Windows on White/Lower Manhattan Cultural Council

GROUP SHOWS

Artists Space/NYC
Franklin Furnace/NYC
Art Basil/Miami
San Paulo Biennale/Brazil
Los Angeles Institute for Contemporary Art
Los Angeles Center for Digital Arts
Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver
Museum of Photographic Arts/San Diego
Museum of Contemporary Art/New Orleans
Tucson Museum of Art/Arizona
Albuquerque Museum of Art & History
Phoenix Art Museum
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art/Arizona
Filter Photo/Gallery - Chicago
Praxis Gallery - Minneapolis
Perspective Gallery - Evanston, IL
Spazio Millepiani/Loosenart.com - Rome
Art Intersection - Phoenix

RESIDENCIES

American Academy in Rome (2)
Irish Museum of Modern Art
Bartlett School of Architecture/UCLondon
School of Art & Architecture/Tulane University
College of DAAP/University of Cincinnati
School of Art/California State University/Chico

CONTACT INFO

EMAIL: denisg@asu.edu

PHONE: (602)663-0368