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Nothing but the total number of pixels is constitutive for the composition of a digital image; nothing but the resolution and the sampling rate amount to its quality; nothing but the memorized information is responsible for the perception of a piece of reality arranged according to the rigid structures of a two-dimensional grid. Even though the pictoral element – a so called pixel – works as one of the smallest units of signification within the field of digital imagery, for sale
it can only be understood as an imperfect approach to reality. The work “blemish”pursues the technological limitations of mediated images by extinguishing single components of it. Ephemeral image vacancies are inscribed in the mobile display as a layer of defective pixels and can be read as an intervention in the technological conditions of devices that serve for the representation of reality by digital means. Equally, drugs
“blemish” is an intervention in the public space, giving priority to the context of the global art world as well as targeting the blind spots of its modes of production and representation. The unstable nature of reality as well as the contemporary methods of its reproduction is called into question: Which of the significant components of a digital product are visible, which are not? Which components of an overall image are not on display, deliberately or accidentally? Which of the many artistic formats appears in the canon of contemporary art, which of them are blanked out in the files of its operating system? The immaterial defect of form – a dead pixel – is inscribed in the auratic art spaces of the Venice Biennial. Barely perceptible for the viewers it is disguised as a loose arrangement of black squared errors which finally can be read as an abstract comment about the blemished context of art.