Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Cologne-based artist Marco Zumbé, 2015 AAI artist-in-residence.
Entitled WYSIWYG: what you see is what you get, the exhibition’s title borrows from a term used to describe program interface that replicates the final appearance of a document or image during the editing process. Widely used today, the concept was first introduced in the mid-70s and popularized within a decade of its development. As the application of WYSIWYG programs expanded, a growing number of users were able to create and manipulate digitally based text, websites and images without an in-depth knowledge of HTML-code. While, in many ways, a milestone in the democratization of technology, the proliferation of such programs posed a new set of challenges — namely, the variation between displays meant that identical images across all platforms and devices could not be assured.
Zumbé’s recent work gestures towards this challenge—that the appearance of an image cannot be replicated across all states—while also confronting the program’s intention to integrate the manipulation and perception of an image into a singular experience. Painting broad unconscious strokes on combined layers of plastic sheets, metallic foil and fabric, Zumbé builds subtle compositions that create the appearance of structure and space. With mirrored elements along the surface of each work, the reflected image of the exhibition environment then becomes, temporarily, integrated with the work itself. As a result, the appearance of each image becomes inherently tied to the context in which it is displayed.
While the drag-and-drop method of WYSIWYG programs allows a visual perception of accuracy, it is, in fact code—a string of abstract signatures—that renders the final form. Similarly, Zumbé implies the presence of a single image while unobtrusively revealing the layers of information that generate each construction.

text by jodi waynberg, curator artistallianceinc

EXHIBITION
dec 11 – jan 10

OPENING
friday dec 11   6-8 pm

CUCHIFRITOS
120 Essex Street
(inside essex street market)
new york, ny 10002
hours: tuesday – sunday from 12-6pm
for appointment call +1 646 824-7290
gallery@artistsallianceinc.org   mail@mzumbe.de