New Petra Cortright show in Los Angeles

By Bruce Sterling

UTA Artist Space is pleased to present CAM WORLS, the first large-scale survey of Petra Cortright’s video work. Fifty of the artist’s videos, made between 2007 and 2017, will be on display, including eighteen never-before-exhibited artworks. The gallery will celebrate with an opening reception on Saturday, February 24, 2018, from 5-7PM.

Cortright’s computer-based practice pioneered a new kind of internet art. The videos in the show will trace the gradual evolution of her online presence, and a practice of perpetual modulation of over ten year of internet ephemera that mines decorative motifs from flowers to the female body. The archival impulse behind her work stresses the visual catchiness and mutability of the digital image, as well as the delicate and self-conscious act of putting oneself “online.” As an artist who “grew up on the internet,” Cortright carefully erects and investigates online trends of personhood as they appear in the culture…

A version of this article appears in WIRED with the headline: New Petra Cortright show in Los Angeles.