UNTITLED is certified to announce Artie Vierkant’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, A Model Release.

Vierkant’s work often exists at the intersection of the abstract conceptual ideal of an object and its physical manifestation. With a focus on where these two points bridge and diverge, the artist has most recently engaged the notion of intellectual property. In his ongoing series Exploits, Vierkant has negotiated directly with intellectual property holders of various kinds for the right to produce objects based on their properties. Crucially for Vierkant, this means the work is not about intellectual property — it is intellectual property. Sourcing this as a material for producing work, the artist explores the reality that whether it is a persons right to their own image or the rights to produce an object (as in the case of a patent), we live in a culture that readily formalizes abstract territories and makes them available for negotiation and exchange.

The exhibition consists of two distinct, albeit intimately related, bodies of work. The back room is composed of two patents from the artist’s Exploits series, in which he has been licensed from the patent holders to produce ‘Detachable storage rack for a metallic structure’ by Rex Rothing of Key Largo, Florida, and ‘Air filter and method of constructing same’ by George Love of Baltimore, Maryland. As the newest iteration of the Exploits series, which debuted last year, the works here acknowledge the breadth that a piece of intellectual property is able to entail, demonstrating the amorphous boundaries that can exist within a single piece of intellectual property, and its expansive possibilities.

The video on display in the front space, Antoine Office, Antoine Casual, represents a departure from the Exploits series, although employing similar ideas and questions. Instead the video turns this concept of property toward the idea of image rights and the body. For Antoine Office, Antoine Casual Vierkant has captured two photographic 3D scans of the same individual. Depicted in both office and casual attire, Antoine’s image has been animated using stock motion capture data, effectively making his image perform the actions of other individuals.

Vierkant’s work looks beyond surface level questions of representation and symbolism, and instead works in the domain of taking an active and actual involvement with the structures and issues he seeks to engage. Through doing so, the artist opens a broader conversation about the informational systems and structures governing our immaterial and material experience.

Artie Vierkantwas born in 1986 in Brainderd, Minnesota. He lives and works in New York. Vierkant received his MFA from the University of California San Diego in 2012. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Higher Pictures, New York (2014), New Galerie, Paris (2013), and Exile, Berlin (2013). He has also recently participated in group exhibitions at galleries and institutions including Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2014), International Center of Photography, New York (2014), UNTITLED, New York (2013), Fonds M-Arco, Marseille, France (2013), Institute of Contemporary Art London (2012), and Carlos/Ishikawa, London (2012).