Release early, release often, delegate everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity (Abrons Arts Center, New York, 2013)

Source: sources/ingested/release-early-release-often-2013-press-release.md

Full analysis: Openness — Release Early, Release Often

Van den Dorpel's first solo exhibition in the United States, curated by Karen Archey as the 2012–2013 AIRspace curatorial resident at Abrons Arts Center. Funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The exhibition ran April 19 – June 7, 2013.

Works shown (→ 1035)

Note 1035 documents the full checklist prepared for the exhibition:

Collages and drawings (all Wilkinson, London or Studio Berlin):

• Untitled (2012): engraving on glass, prints, matte, paint, combined drawings from DeviantArt, 50 × 40cm
• Untitled (2012): three further collage works, 50 × 40cm each
• Randomness, Decisions, and Human Nature (2012): 100 × 70cm, 50 × 40cm
• History States (2012): 40 × 50cm
• Three further works on paper, 2012–2013

Spherical Perspex assemblages (from Utah MoCA / Wilkinson):

• Assemblage (About Reviews and Press) (2012): digital UV print on hand cut synthetic glass, 95 × 95 × 95cm
• Assemblage (Canvas) (2012): digital print of scanned canvas on hand cut synthetic glass, 85 × 95 × 85cm
• Assemblage (Shell) (2012): digital print, spray paint, 90 × 95 × 100cm
• Assemblage (Portrait of Collector's Dog) (2013): work in progress, Studio Berlin

Web-based and animated works (online):

• Highway (2008), Ethereal Self (2008), Scroll (2007), Untitled (Dutch Fractal) (2005)
• Wishing Well .biz (2013 website), Cloud on Title (2012 video loop)
• SSH (2013, work in progress)

The recursive hand-drawing chain

The press release's central example of recursion:

1. Hand drawing appropriated from DeviantArt
2. Reappears in a collage
3. Used as lead image for About (Wilkinson, London, March 2012)
4. Reappears in reviews of About — online and in print
5. Screenshot of review printed on a strip of Plexi
6. Plexi strip twisted into new spherical Perspex sculpture

Each release generates new context, which is harvested and re-materialized. This is "The Work = The Work + Its Documentation" (→ 992) as physical process.

Curatorial framework

Karen Archey had been working closely with van den Dorpel in the New York context (→ tweets archive). The press release she authored identifies three interlocking frameworks for the work: recursion (curatorial premise, demonstrated through the hand chain), medium permeability (works installed associatively across physical and virtual), and data mining (dissociations.com as self-analytical generative tool). Her framing also connects the work to institutional critique and cultural anthropology — a broader critical context than most earlier press texts had applied.

See also

• Openness — Release Early, Release Often — full conceptual analysis
• Recursion and Self-Reference — the hand-drawing chain as primary example
• Works Overview — Abrons as first US solo in the chronological catalog