Client: Gagosian Art Gallery

Overview

The contemporary art gallery Gagosian hosted a digital art exhibition by Swiss visual artist Urs Fischer, described as one of the most significant contemporary artists working today. The presentation, titled Denominator, was open to the public for more than a month late in 2022 at the gallery’s West 24th Street location in New York and again in Los Angeles at Gagosian’s North Camden Drive location

The digital art sculpture was comprised of a five-sided LED cube built from SNA Displays’ BOLD™ Interior LED display technology. The cube’s screens employed 2.5 mm pixel spacing and were mounted to a free-standing steel frame. The structure was custom-designed and precisely installed to minimize seams. The art installation processed 10.4 million pixels.

Goals

According to artist Urs Fisher, the underlying theme of Denominator was that “Objects are an extension of our bodies, our needs, our desires.” Furthermore, humans “primarily interact with matter that has been altered, cultivated, engineered, or manufactured, and as we fill the planet with new products, the variety of flora, fauna, and funga diminishes.” Denominator was one installation in a three-part series by Fischer that “form a subjective encyclopedic composition that tells the story of humanity through the artifacts it leaves behind.”

Process

A 12-foot cube constructed from a subframe structure and large LED screens, Denominator displayed a sequence of fragments from international television commercials in a shifting composition that spanned the history of the medium. The art piece is comprised of five LED screens built from SNA Displays’ BOLD™ Interior product series. Each screen employs 2.5 mm pixel spacing and is mounted to a free-standing steel frame custom-designed and precisely installed to minimize seams.

SNA Displays and its installation partner Digital Dreams ensured that the dimensions on Denominator’s free-standing steel structure were installed to rigorous standards. The artist envisioned a cube structure that appeared to float above the exhibit floor, and this feature was accomplished through custom and deliberative design and engineering.

Additional Information

Each face of the LED cube portrays advertisements drawn from television and social media from 1950 to the present in a shifting composition. Through the use of AI algorithms, the commercials portrayed on the digital canvas were deconstructed into individual shots. They were then grouped by theme or color and displayed on the cube in layered patterns and choreographed sequences. In choosing a five-sided LED canvas, Fischer maximized the medium’s ability to showcase the digital artwork in a dynamic way.