Mark Dorf
Works, Bio/CV, ContactNewsletter
Late Pastoral
2024 - 2025
Late Pastoral engages in a visual language that is shaped by the pervasive influence of technology, design, and the rhythms of digital connectivity. The markings in these works result from processing the images through a custom algorithm that employs a variety of computer vision libraries: technologies that play a key role in refining much of the automated systems that influence our lives on a daily basis—from AI, to production, to surveillance.
The works from this series echo the aesthetic treatment of the pastoral landscapes of Western art history’s bucolic visions that are inseparable from ownership, industry, and the unmistakable traces of human presence. In focusing on plant life, the works in Late Pastoral update this entanglement is in a more individualized manner—through the focus on singular plant life rather than the wider landscape, the images create a “higher resolution” or "zoomed in" pastoral that reflects the precision of our digital age.
The materiality of these prints heighten these interplays. The low luminance rear-illuminated prints, rendered on non-glare matte UV acrylic, occupy a space between the glow of a screen and the tactile quality of a traditional paper print. This approach collapses the divide between subject and process, creating a visual experience informed by the ecological world, the history of traditional media, contemporary technologies, and automated labor. The result is an object influenced by the landscapes of the Western art history, and one that updates the long standing entanglement of technology and what is termed "Nature" in the pastoral tradition.
Additional images available upon request.
Selected Exhibitions
2024 Reimagine Tomorrow 1954-2024, König Gallery x Expanded Art, Essen, DE
Selected Publications
2024 Dear Dave Magazine
Late Pastoral
2024 - 2025
Late Pastoral engages in a visual language that is shaped by the pervasive influence of technology, design, and the rhythms of digital connectivity. The markings in these works result from processing the images through a custom algorithm that employs a variety of computer vision libraries: technologies that play a key role in refining much of the automated systems that influence our lives on a daily basis—from AI, to production, to surveillance.
The works from this series echo the aesthetic treatment of the pastoral landscapes of Western art history’s bucolic visions that are inseparable from ownership, industry, and the unmistakable traces of human presence. In focusing on plant life, the works in Late Pastoral update this entanglement is in a more individualized manner—through the focus on singular plant life rather than the wider landscape, the images create a “higher resolution” or "zoomed in" pastoral that reflects the precision of our digital age.
The materiality of these prints heighten these interplays. The low luminance rear-illuminated prints, rendered on non-glare matte UV acrylic, occupy a space between the glow of a screen and the tactile quality of a traditional paper print. This approach collapses the divide between subject and process, creating a visual experience informed by the ecological world, the history of traditional media, contemporary technologies, and automated labor. The result is an object influenced by the landscapes of the Western art history, and one that updates the long standing entanglement of technology and what is termed "Nature" in the pastoral tradition.
Additional images available upon request.
Selected Exhibitions
2024 Reimagine Tomorrow 1954-2024, König Gallery x Expanded Art, Essen, DE
Selected Publications
2024 Dear Dave Magazine