Photos Topmix, one of 31 ink jet prints in Alyn Silberstein's digital art exhibition Artist Alyn Silberstein Picture1 View full slideshow (5 images) Resources Minneapolis Institute of Arts Your Voice Join the conversation with other MPR listeners in the News Forum.

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MIA's digital art show mixes it up
by Chris Roberts, Minnesota Public Radio
March 11, 2004

Topmix, one of 31 ink jet prints in Alyn Silberstein's digital art exhibition, "Top Mix," at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Silberstein says his goal is to demonstrate digital art has a place in the fine art world. (Photo courtesy of Minneapolis Institute of Arts)

If you've ever messed around with one of those graphics programs on your computer, that allows you to distort and reshape a digital picture, you'll have an insight into a new exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The show is so bold and attention grabbing it almost seems out of sync with the MIA's more sedate, educational mission.

Minneapolis, Minn. — Children may be artist Alyn Silberstein's most responsive audience. When Silberstein was setting up his installation "Top Mix" in the MIA's Minnesota Artists Gallery, a throng of kids swarmed around the velvet ropes, mesmerized by the crisp swirling designs of the ink jet prints on the walls. For several it was like gazing at the sky and discovering shapes and figures in the clouds.

"The fifth one over there, kind of looks like a flannel shirt," said one boy.

	Artist Alyn Silberstein

A girl remarked, "That one over there looks like a butterfly."

"And the one right there," another boy exclaimed, "like that green one right there, and like that orange one right there...they look like faces. Weird faces."

As a painter, Alyn Silberstein has long had a penchant for creating massive abstract psychedelic pieces, much too large for a living room wall. He became frustrated because they rarely sold, and ended up languishing at his home. Once, a museum panel came to evaluate his work for a possible show, and he led them to his garage, where his paintings were piling up. Silberstein realized how much his work was cramping his lifestyle.

"I like to have my motorcycles in my garage instead of my art," he says. "And so I told those guys, I go you know, the next show I do, I swear to god, I'm gonna do it on a computer. I'm gonna design the whole show on a computer, and if somebody wants it, I'll print it out."

	Picture1

Silberstein began shooting mundane everyday objects on a cheap digital camera. He spent a lot of time in an asian grocery store, clicking pictures of vibrantly colorful cracker and cookie containers. His favorite cookie tin, called Topmix, became the name of his exhibition. Silberstein then loaded the images into his computer, and using two different software programs, manipulated them until they became unrecognizable eye popping abstractions.

"I have a drawing tablet hooked up to my computer," he says, "and I'm warping, stretching, transforming, making patterns, pushing, pulling, shifting, kind of like just smearing stuff around like you would with paint but I'm doing it with a picture, you know?"

The computer memorizes what amounts to hundreds of manipulations, and then Silberstein edits the work until he's happy with what he sees. The whole process takes about a week. He spends a good portion of the time rendering each work in a resolution high enough to make a museum ready ink jet print. "It's really kind of fun," Silberstein says. "I mean it's tedious, but there's a lot of that sort of, hands on fluidity and creativity that you wouldn't expect to come out of a, you know, something that's all computerized and digital and stuff."

	The MIA's Minnesota Artists Gallery

There are 31 pieces in Top Mix. Silberstein views it as an installation. He's even painted an irregular black and white design on the walls, copying the patterns of one of his abstracted digital images. Painter Doug Padilla sits on the panel which chooses artists for the MIA's Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program. Padilla says he's not a fan of digital art, but was drawn to Silberstein's work because of its exuberance and life.

"We live in a time that's very detached, very ironic," he says. "Everybody has distanced themselves from feeling things and experiencing things, and Alyn was willing to just go all out and just, you know, wham there it is, there's the whole thing. Big Color. Check this out. See this. Feel this. So I liked that."

Silberstein says his goal is to demonstrate there's a place for digital art in the fine art world. He says fine artists have been extremely slow to embrace digital technology, he thinks partly because they fear it.

"Sometimes I think fine artists think that oh we're so out there and we're really pushing it," he says. "I think in a lot of ways they're really not, you know, and I think sometimes it kind of freaks them out a little bit when you actually do push it."

Top Mix will be on view at the MIA through May 2. Silberstein is also selling oversized postcards of his creations at the exhibition for a buck apiece.

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