Artie Vierkant

Vierkant was born in 1986, studied photography at the University of Pennsylvania, and earned an MFA from the University of California, San Diego^*4. While in graduate school, he published the essay “The Image Object Post-Internet” in 2010 and began Image Objects the following year^*6. His education in photography is important. His trajectory is less that of a net artist who later turned to objects than that of an artist who reexamined the relations among photographic original, print, documentation, and reproduction from within a networked environment^*18.

By that time, exhibitions were no longer experienced only in galleries. Installation-image sites, blogs, and social media allowed viewers who never visited the venue to know the work^*4. Documentation in conceptual art had served to transmit vanished actions and temporary installations after the fact, while appropriation art questioned the sources and ownership of existing images^*5. Vierkant focused on a newer situation: installation photographs were no longer records added after the physical work. They were often seen first, and their color, angle, and cropping determined the work’s appearance^*6. He therefore did more than criticize documentation in writing; he established a rule by which the artist would alter and officially distribute it^*22.

This shift also affects evaluation and sales. Exhibition reviews, sales materials, and artist biography pages compare works through installation views. A JPEG that remains in search results may be viewed far longer than an arrangement that existed in a gallery for only a few weeks^*4. As long as documentation is treated as publicity outside the work, it is difficult to examine which image comes to represent the artwork and guide viewing or purchase in advance^*6.

Vierkant addressed this problem through Image Objects, which produces both object and image. An online image alone cannot register the process through which a work acquires material, fabrication cost, transport, ownership, and price^*13. A stable sculpture alone would leave outside the work the fact that many viewers know it through search results and press images. He therefore operated the screen file, the cut object, and the altered installation photograph as one series^*14.

Why Turn a Flat Photograph into a Three-Dimensional Object?

Image Objects begins with an abstract image made on screen, UV-printed on aluminum composite or Sintra and machine-cut along its contour. Hung on a wall, it presents a photographic surface; viewed obliquely, it becomes an object with thickness and shadow^*1. A conventional rectangular print can obscure the process through which a file becomes a commodity with material, fabrication costs, and transport requirements^*2. The irregular contour and thickness make that conversion available for inspection in the gallery^*7.

If a person or landscape were printed, viewers might first interpret the depicted subject and understand differences between object and documentation through that subject. Image Objects offers no stable external referent. Contour, thickness, color, shadow, and position on the wall therefore come forward^*1. From the front, a piece can resemble a flat graphic; from an angle, it reads as an object. Abstract form serves the series because it makes that difference easy to compare^*13.

Why Refuse Accurate Installation Documentation?

Installation photography is usually expected to show accurately how a work appeared in the gallery. Vierkant removes works from official photographs, multiplies shapes, or alters colors and shadows, publishing images that differ from the actual installation^*1. Viewers who did not visit the site encounter a form that never existed there as the official image of the work^*3. Instead of merely stating that documentation is not neutral, he makes the record deliberately inaccurate and allows it to be remembered alongside the physical object^*12.

This alteration does not claim every online photograph as the artist’s work without limit. Vierkant works with images officially made by the artist or gallery and distinguishes them from third-party posts^*12. That restriction makes visible both the free circulation of artwork images and the artist’s authority to decide which version becomes official^*15. Signatures, permission, copyright, and distribution channels do not disappear in an environment of easy copying; they continue to determine which images count as the work.

Authorship Does Not Return to the “First File”

Each work has an initial digital file, but that file is not treated as the sole finished version. Saving, fabricating, exhibiting, photographing, retouching, and publishing generate different forms at each stage^*4. Vierkant does not relinquish authorship. He decides which object will be sold, which photograph will be altered, and which version will appear on an official website or in press materials^*15. The artist’s role shifts from protecting the first file as an immutable original to determining the uses and routes of publication for divergent versions^*21.

What Does Post-Internet Mean?

Here “post” does not mean that the internet has ended^*4. It describes a situation in which the network has become an ordinary route for making, exhibiting, selling, criticizing, and preserving art rather than a special subject^*5. Vierkant’s concern is not a digital-looking style, but the way the same data acquires different materials and audiences as screen image, cut panel, installation photograph, and search result^*21. Later discussion of Post-Internet art likewise centered on the impossibility of separating the material artwork from the means through which it is presented and distributed^*22.

Image Objects, 2011–Present

The early works were printed from digital files in six UV layers on Sintra and cut to shape^*1. Later pieces expanded into aluminum composite panels and large three-dimensional structures^*16. The alteration of installation documentation continued^*2. Although the materials changed, the series retained its refusal to arrange file, object, and documentation as a one-way chain of copies^*3.

The cut contour appears as a flat graphic in a frontal image and as an object with depth from an oblique view. In online documentation, the photographer’s position changes that difference substantially. The work does not offer the on-site viewer a “correct form” while sending the online viewer an inferior copy^*2. Each audience receives different information^*16.

Public Art Fund: Work in Public Space

For Public Art Fund, Vierkant printed digitally altered imagery on large steel cubes, turning a photographic process into objects in urban space. Outdoors, viewers walked around the work and photographed it again from different angles with smartphones^*7. Because those new photographs could be posted online immediately, the sculptural work did not halt image circulation; it generated successive photographs from other viewpoints^*8.

Exposure Adjustment on a Sunset

Exposure Adjustment on a Sunset is an early work that applies an exposure change to an ordinary sunset photograph. The name of an editing command and the record of transformation come forward more than the value of the natural scene. Before Image Objects, it already treated the photograph as mutable data rather than the final result of a single exposure^*11.

Writing and Making as One Process

“The Image Object Post-Internet” did not function as an explanatory text written after the works. It established criteria for making them. The essay defines relations between object and photograph, gallery viewing and web circulation, author and quotation, which Image Objects then puts into operation^*4. Writing and making proceeded together because neither theory alone nor the object alone could address the problem^*19.

Revising the Original/Copy Divide

Photographic history has repeatedly examined the relation between negative and print, original and reproduction. In Vierkant’s work, the source file, the wall-mounted output, the sales photograph, and the altered installation image that differs from the site are used respectively for production, sale, publicity, and search results^*4. The JPEG first encountered in a search may be more than a substitute for the object; it may contain colors or shapes that the object never had^*5. The central question is therefore less which version is the original than who made each version, who sees it, and which version represents the work in pricing, memory, and critical evaluation^*13.

Market Value and Online Visibility

The gallery object can be owned and sold, while the online image can be copied without payment. Yet exhibition announcements, press images, reviews, and search results are often the points through which buyers and critics first encounter a work. In Image Objects, the artist produces both the sellable object and the circulating image^*8. The altered online photograph spreads a form that did not exist in the gallery and shapes expectations and judgments before the physical object is seen^*12. The series makes visible how the object’s market price and the image’s circulation influence one another^*15.

The format also addresses the authority of official images made by museums and galleries. Camera position, lighting, and color correction are typically presented as techniques of faithful reproduction, but the artist, photographer, and exhibitor determine the standard of fidelity^*8. Vierkant foregrounds alteration and shows the installation photograph as an edited image that represents the work on the market and guides purchase and evaluation^*17.

Place in Photographic History

Conceptual art questioned the need for a permanent object, while appropriation art examined ownership and quotation of existing images^*9. Vierkant addressed a later situation in which the physical work and its installation photographs are produced together and alter one another’s appearance and value^*10. In his work, photography is not a document added after the completed object^*17. He creates an official image containing forms absent from the site, distributes it through press materials and search results, and later may incorporate that installation photograph into another object^*20. Production extends to the continuing decision about which version to show to which audience, without returning file, object, and documentation to one final form^*22.