forking paths | group show

With Channa Horwitz, Brigitte Kowanz, Jenna Sutela and Gabriella Torres-Ferrer, forking paths unites four artists for the first time whose mutual interest lies in the connection between art and technology. In historical and recent works, this group exhibition demonstrates their central engagement with codes, data, patterns and language, which each of them interpret and transform individually, sometimes creating distinct systems. 

This viewing room foregrounds the four individual artistic positions and offers an insight into the artists' practices beyond the works in the exhibition. Please click on the works for further information, texts and photos.

The exhibition was realized in collaboration with Lisson Gallery from London, New York, and Shanghai and Embajada from Puerto Rico.

Jenna Sutela (*1983 in Turku, FI) uses biological and computational systems to create audio-visual works, sculptures, images and performance art. Working with artificial neuronal networks or bacteria and with the help of her own systems and algorithms, the artist uncovers patterns and meanings that are hidden in disorder. With her collaborative approach she points to decentralised organisation, she questions social hierarchy, broaches the issue of communication between species and the connection of awareness and the material world. Her procedural works are based on latest scientific research and reflect its social-political impact. Sutela's work promotes the idea of a symbiotic network and the renunciation of an anthropocentric world. Her oeuvre illustrates that man does not exist in a void, but in symbiotic ecosystems with bacteria, mould, computers and many other elements, some of which remain incomprehensible.

Sutela's work has been shown at the Serpentine Gallery in London (2019), Haus der Kunst in Munich (2022) at the Liverpool Biennial (2021), Shanghai Biennale (2021), Moderna Museet in Stockholm (2019), and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (2018), among others.


Installation view NO NO NSE NSE, Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway (2020) | Photo: Aage A. Mikalsen

"The key to my work is simplicity and complexity. I have been working with the premise that any complexity can be understood in it's simplest form; that all diverse fields are in some way similar. in my notations I am interested in breaking through the barrier of the different arts, because they all have a common language."

– Channa Horwitz

Channa Horwitz | Copyright Estate of Channa Horwitz | Photo: Ellen Davis

Channa Horwitz' works were part of the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, and shown at the Whitney Biennial in New York in 2014. In 1970 she was included as the only female position with a project proposal in the catalog of the well-known Art and Technology program of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Works by the artist have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2018), Kunsthalle Wien (2016), Itaú Cultural in São Paulo (2015), Museum Tinguely in Basel (2015), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2015) and Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2013) and Hammer Museum of Art in Los Angeles (2012), among others.

"[...] Torres Ferrer's work interrupts any lasting perception that the virtual is separate from lived experience, or that technology is waste-free."

– Meghana Karnik (Kuratorin und Autorin)

Photo: Gabriella Torres-Ferrer

"What interests me about language is that it creates or constructs reality, just as light makes it visible. Therein lies a proximity that explains why both often occur in parallel or redundantly and tautologically in my works. By bringing them together, they make each other visible."

– Brigitte Kowanz