The Allure of Unfathomable Industry: Artist Rafael Vargas Bernard at Art&Culture Center Hollywood

Sat Nov 9, 2019 - Sun Jan 5, 2020

Sensors catch your movement, altering pitch and frequency as you approach propped paintings with drips and marks. With a balance of works that shift our perception of physical space and invite us to pick up headphones and participate, Rafael Vargas Bernard employs readily accessible technologies to create interactive experiences that provoke dialogue and action.

Vargas Bernard utilizes digital art and new media, such as sound, video and programming, to explore functional and non-functional systems – including power structures, economic systems and generative systems – and society’s relationship with these entities. One subject in Vargas Bernard’s work explores Tether, Bitfinex, and the Bitcoin bubble burst as markets of chaos and confusion. Some pieces require direct or indirect participation, and most incorporate a generative digital, electrical, or mechanical system. All produce sounds.

His paintings contain images made by a programmed and glitched vertical plotter based on the wind directions and trajectory of Hurricane Maria over Puerto Rico. The artist also utilizes abstracted photographs taken from different Puerto Rican citizens’ Facebook accounts. These references to real events attest to the fragile relationship between humans and natural disaster.

Rafael Vargas Bernard is the Community Coordinator at Mana Contemporary Miami, where he maintains his own studio.

Opening Reception:
Sat, Nov 9, 2019, 5 PM

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