While the Internet has often been pitted against traditional media by artists and journalists alike, Guerrero Gallery’s current side-by-side solo shows featuring Hilary Pecis and Erin M. Riley transform ephemeral online images into tactile artworks that reflect the changing ways of consuming and storing visual information. Riley’s “Forgotten in a File” is a collection of webcam vanity shots reconfigured as handwoven tapestries. The tapestries lend a sense of permanence to these amateur nude portraits, cementing the ways people express desire and intimacy through picture messages and social networking sites. Engaging with the Internet from a more generalized point of view, Hilary Pecis’s digital collages examine the way random searches aggregate information. For her show, “Concensus,” the artist searched words or phrases like “gold” or “the grossest” on Google Images and created abstract collages dense with detail. The randomized images speak to busy, scattered way of learning and understanding that the Internet fosters. Check out some photos from the opening night.
