Chris Dorland (Canadian-American, b. 1978) is a New York-based artist working across painting, installation and digital media. His work examines how images are shaped by the technical conditions of software, hardware and networked systems. He starts from digitally mediated source material and treats compression, distortion and data loss as structuring forces. His paintings translate these digital constraints into surfaces of acrylic polymer, pigment and gesso on linen.
Earlier work looked at how surveillance technologies perceive, record and reproduce reality, using screens, drones and other optical devices. Dorland names JG Ballard as a major early influence and has said he is drawn to infrastructural decay. He has said that painting lets digital source material become something encountered with the body, not just the eyes. Interfaces recur in the work, and in his words “Interfaces are where power becomes aesthetic”.
