Jon Kessler and Yan Lei: Datumsoria

A neologism, Datumsoria conjugates datum and sensoria, denoting a new perceptual space immanent to the information age. Known for his ingeniously crafted kinetic works, Jon Kessler’s explicit portrait and figure, namely the supermodel Gisele Bündchen and the artist’s ten-year old nephew, are as manipulative as evasive by way of a mechanically rendered flurry of speeds and kaleidoscope of juxtapositions and superimpositions, insinuating infinite regressions and expansion at the same time, reminiscent of a paradoxical mixology of anxiety, humor, desire and failure that is characteristic of the contemporary American ethos or the world at large.

The conceptual artist Yan Lei, on the other hand, resorts to Machine Learning as an added intellectual device in order to question conceptualism’s very gist, that of the power of signifying, making aware that in the age of Internet and Artificial Intelligence the production of meaning is as multifaceted as it is unstable and can sometimes be perilous.