Ever wondered what happens when you put a CD in a microwave? Paul Kneale has us all in a spin!
Canadian born multimedia artist, Paul Kneale, has been exploring the boundaries of digital creation since childhood.“There’s a photo of me as a toddler in the late 80s printing an ASCII image from a Commodore 64 computer,” Kneale told Artuner.
“Digital and not digital were never really a sharp line for me… I was in the first generation to grow up entirely with the internet, so it was natural to have a foot in both realms.”
Kneale’s youthful penchant for digital practices and its inherent linkages with art is on display in some of his most recent creations. This past May, Kneale released a series of NFTs with LiveArt called “Free Software.” The curated drop showcases a sequence of CDs emblazoned with chromatic, glistening fissures. To create this pearlescent effect, Kneale placed CDs inside of a microwave (a practice drawn from a YouTube trend). After the CDs were thoroughly heated, Kneale used a high resolution scanner to make 4800 dpi scans, thereby rendering the melted, cracked CDs in striking detail.
Before he entered the NFT arena, Kneale spent nearly a decade using digital tools to capture and recast the physical world. Using cheap scanners, he created a series of groundbreaking “scanner paintings” that transmuted the light within his studio into an array of vibrant hues and large swaths of colors. The most recent of those paintings combine multiple layers of scans, encapsulating the light conditions at various points during the creation process.
In his sculptural practice, Kneale uses vibrant, curving tubes of neon, often attaching them to banal objects, such as trash cans and satellite dishes. In his series “Event Horizon,” which refers to the edge of a black hole, Kneale renders seemingly intangible cosmic concepts into physical objects, layered with an intergalactic sensibility.
Kneale’s work is energized by a desire to visualize the linkages between digital and physical space and is part of an emerging group of artists who are animated by an interest in how technology seismically alters our existence.
Works by Kneale have been included in the exhibition Peindre la Nuit at Centre Pompidou Metz (October 2018), Contemporary Photography Forum exhibition of the Boca Raton Museum (Florida, USA), the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, the Rubell Family Collection and at the prestigious Thetis Gardens in the Arsenale Novissimo (Venice), in a group exhibition on view during La Biennale di Venezia 57°. In Autumn 2019 he unveiled Flat Earth Visa, a site-specific installation for the hillscape surrounding the Palazzo Re Rebaudengo in Guarene (Piedmont, Italy).
Paul Kneale’s exclusive NFT collection “Free Software” is available for purchase through LiveArtX. Paul Kneale also has an NFT in the LiveArtX Global 100.
