September 24, 2014 – March 21, 2016
Luminous Flux, the inaugural exhibition at Art House in Santa Fe, New Mexico, features innovative computer, digital, interactive, video, and electroluminescent art from the Thoma Foundation collection, including stimulating works by Jim Campbell, Daniel Canogar, Sarah Frost, Teo González, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Howard Mehring, Manfred Mohr, Paul Reed, Jason Salavon, Peter Sarkisian, Björn Schülke, John F. Simon Jr., Federico Solmi, Anne Morgan Spalter, Roman Verostko, and Leo Villareal.
Over the past thirty years, Carl and Marilynn Thoma have built a diverse collection dedicated to several major art movements, including contemporary artists who embrace emerging technologies. The Thomas believe that electronic and digital art reflects the essence and progress of contemporary culture. Luminous Flux showcases significant artworks from computer and light art pioneers, as well as their optically radiant precursors in abstract painting from the 1960s. The evolution of algorithm-based visual art, from Op Art through today’s creative expressions of software, is a story not often told in art history. Notable in this exhibition are the artists who have mastered the craft of computer art, its circuitry, and coding, as an extension of the rule-based painting systems that dominated geometric art in the twentieth century.
Artworks chosen from the Foundation’s collection shed light on topics such as color perception, the abstraction of the human body via digital media, the computerization of drawing practices and the occasional anxiety induced by rapidly changing technology. In sum, the exhibition is intended to inspire viewers to think about life in the digital era.
