Joseph Nechvatal, Post Conceptual Digital Artist Oil Painting Screenprint Diptych Joseph Nechvatal, 1985

Joseph Nechvatal
The Oedipal God of Oil Paint and Destruction, Diptych
Oil and screenprint on two canvases, 1985, both signed ‘Joseph Nechvatal’, titled and dated on the reverse, with label from Brooke Alexander, NY.

Joseph James Nechvatal (born 15 January 1951) is a post-conceptual digital artist and art theoretician who creates computer-assisted paintings and computer animations, often using custom-created computer viruses.
Joseph Nechvatal was born in Chicago. He studied fine art and philosophy at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Cornell University and Columbia University, where he studied with Arthur Danto while serving as the archivist to the minimalist composer La Monte Young. From 1979, he exhibited his work in New York City, primarily at Galerie Richard, Brooke Alexander Gallery and Universal Concepts Unlimited. He has also solo exhibited in Berlin, Paris, Chicago, Cologne, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Aalst, Belgium, Youngstown, Senouillac, Lund, Toulouse, Turin, Arles and Munich.
His work in the early 1980s chiefly consisted of post minimalist gray graphite drawings that were often photo mechanically enlarged. During that period he was associated with the artist group Colab and helped establish the non-profit cultural space ABC No Rio. In 1983 he co-founded the avant-garde electronic art music audio project Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine. In 1984, Nechvatal began work on an opera called XS: The Opera Opus (1984-6) with the no wave musical composer Rhys Chatham. He was included in the MoMA PS1 show Synesthetcis in 1985 along with Peter Halley, Richard Hambleton, Komar and Melamid, Richard Prince, Kiki Smith, Nancy Spero and David Wojnarowicz. He began using computers to make “paintings” in 1986 and later, in his signature work, began to employ computer viruses. These “collaborations” with viral systems positioned his work as an early contribution to what is increasingly referred to as a post-human aesthetic.
From 1991–1993 he was artist-in-residence at the Louis Pasteur Atelier in Arbois, France and at the Saline Royale/Ledoux Foundation’s computer lab.There he worked on The Computer Virus Project, which was an artistic experiment with computer viruses and computer animation. He exhibited at Documenta 8 in 1987.
In 1999 Nechvatal obtained his Ph.D. in the philosophy of art and new technology concerning immersive virtual reality at Roy Ascott’s Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts (CAiiA), University of Wales College, Newport, UK (now the Planetary Collegium at the University of Plymouth). There he developed his concept of viractualism, a conceptual art idea that strives “to create an interface between the biological and the technological.” According to Nechvatal, this is a new topological space.
In 2002 he extended his experimentation into viral artificial life through a collaboration with the programmer Stephane Sikora of music2eye in a work called the Computer Virus Project II, inspired by the a-life work of John Horton Conway (particularly Conway’s Game of Life), by the general cellular automata work of John von Neumann, by the genetic programming algorithms of John Koza and the auto-destructive art of Gustav Metzger.
In 2005 he exhibited Computer Virus Project II works (digital paintings, digital prints, a digital audio installation and two live electronic virus-attack art installations) in a solo show called cOntaminatiOns at Château de Linardié in Senouillac, France. In 2006 Nechvatal received a retrospective exhibition entitled Contaminations at the Butler Institute of American Art’s Beecher Center for Arts and Technology.
In 2013, Nechvatal showed work in Noise, an official collateral show of the 55th Venice Biennale of Art, that was based on his book Immersion Into Noise.
From 1999 to 2013, Nechvatal taught art theories of immersive virtual reality and the viractual at the School of Visual Arts in New York City (SVA).
Joe Lewis wrote: in the artist/theorist tradition of Robert Smithson, Joseph Nechvatal is a pioneer in the field of digital image making who challenges our perceptions of nature by altering conventional notions of space and time, gender, and self. … Nechvatal successfully plunged into the depths where art, technology and theory meet.

Colab Redux at Brooke Alexander:
Seminal artist group Colab (short for Collaborative Project) is getting an abbreviated 30-year anniversary look at Brooke Alexander Editions. Formed in 1978 and active for about 10 years, Colab was distinguished for its democratically run, open membership that included, among others, Jenny Holzer, G. H. Hovagimyan, Joseph Nechvatal, Tom Otterness, Judy Rifka, and Robin Winters.Colab has continued to inspire numerous incarnations of organized artists communities, including ABC No Rio. Aesthetically, Colab focused on new media instead of traditional art objects, emphasizing TV production, video editing, film, and performance. Colab’s landmark Times Square exhibition in 1980 was a “groundswell of popularly accessible socially themed artworks held in an empty building that has housed an erotic massage parlor. Critics called it ‘punk art’—‘three cord art anyone can play.’” His computer-robotic assisted paintings and computer animations are shown regularly in galleries and museums throughout the world. From 1991-3 he worked as artist-in-resident at the Louis Pasteur Atelier and the Saline Royale / Ledoux Foundation’s computer lab in Arbois, France on ‘The Computer Virus Project’: an experiment with computer viruses as a creative stratagem. He has exhibited his work widely in Europe and the United States, both in private and public venues.

Awards
2003 New York Foundation for the Arts: Computer Arts
1996-98 Research Fellowship,University of Wales ,CAiiA, Great-Britain
1995 Artist-in Residence, Cite des Art Internationale, Paris
1992 New York, NY Foundation for the Arts, Painting
1992-93 Artist-in-Resident, Fondation Claude-Nicolas Ledoux’s computer lab in Arc-et-Senans
1991-93 Artist-in-Residence, Arbois, France
1989 Jackson Pollock- Lee Krasner Foundation Award
1988 New York, NY Foundation for the Arts, Painting
1986 National Endowment for the Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts
1985 National Endowment for the Arts, Painting
National Endowment for the Arts, Opera and Musical Theater
Massachusetts Council of the Arts, Performance

Public Collections

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, L.A., USA
The Jewish Museum, New York, NY, USA
Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, Sweden
Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
The Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC, USA
The Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA
The New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM, USA
The Portland Museum of Art, Portland, OR, USA
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MN, USA
The Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA
Musée de Dôle, Dôle, France
Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
The Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, OK, USA
Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, USA
The Schyl Foundation, Malmo Konsthall, Sweden
The South Dakota Museum of Art, Brookings, SD, USA
The Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA
The University of Wyoming Art Museum, Laramie, WY, USA
The Municipal Museum of Art, Györ, Hungary
The Robert Shiffler Foundation, Greenville OH, USA
The Academy Art Museum, Easton, MD, USA
The Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH, USA
Saline Royale, Arc-et-Senans, France
Musée Léon Dierx, La Réunion, France
Shoes Or No Shoes Museum, Oudenaarde, Belgium