Synaptic Bliss I by Aziz + Cucher

Aziz + Cucher

Aziz + Cucher, consisting of Anthony Aziz (born 1961) and Sammy Cucher (b. 1958), are American artists working collaboratively since meeting in graduate school in 1990 at the San Francisco Art Institute. They are considered pioneers in the field of digital imaging and post-photography, with projects exhibited at numerous international venues, including the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995, Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Partners in work and life, they are based in Brooklyn, New York.
Aziz + Cucher have worked across media including digital photography, video installation, sculpture, screen-printing and textiles. They were among the first to use Adobe Photoshop in the context of fine art photography. The resulting series of images (1992 to 2002) can be seen as a commentary and reflection on the relationship between the human body and the technological forces that shape our society. In later projects (2003 to 2006), which grew to include video installation, their concerns shifted towards the way that our perception of nature and the landscape had been augmented and modified by technological mediation. More recent projects have addressed their personal relationship to the ongoing unrest in the Middle East, as well as the absurd and often irrational forces that have shaped our financial and political realities in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
Synaptic Bliss series, 2003–2007:
The central piece in this series is a 4-channel video installation commissioned by the Festival Villette Numerique in Paris in 2004. The series is characterized by a shift in visual language from the human body to representing a landscape in which diverse forms are superimposed, becoming intertwined, and slowly emerging from an intensive colored flurry. Each individual shape seems in constant flux, becoming distinguished by a shift in tone, orientation, or size of its colored texture. The work in this series explores ideas of a digital consciousness that allows for the simultaneous perception of multiple perspectives and scales, as well as for the blurring of the distinctions between the body and its environment.
Museum Collections:
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
Musée de l'Élysée, Lausanne, Switzerland
MUSAC, Museum of Contemporary Art, Leon, Spain
Maison Europeene de la Photographie, Paris, France
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Fond National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France
San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, California
Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia
Denver Museum of Art, Denver, Colorado
Fonds Regional d’Art Contemporain, Auvergne, France
Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany
National Art Gallery, Caracas, Venezuela
Di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Rene and Veronica di Rosa Foundation, Napa, California
Museo Alejandro Otero, Caracas, Venezuela
Martin Z. Margulies Collection, Miami
Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, Michigan

Read more