A DIGITAL GUERNICA

I'm getting chills thinking about what's happening as I write this review of Uri Dotan's digital online art exhibit. He has catapulted me into the mid 21st century where today's random skills, content and technology have become the norm. Virtual art is created in the mind, on machines, projected and viewed electronically. Today still in 1995 Israeli-born artist Dotan tranports us into our own futures by creating artwork that portrays the "impact of technology on human evolution."

ion magazine's Digital Art Show

Uri Dotan's extraordinary digital paintings and sculptures exist for us in a digital world. We first encounter the beautiful pages of ion magazine at http://www.ion.sgi.com, a site sponsored by Silicon Graphics. We make our way via "Cyberstar" to Uri Daton's page. It's taking ten minutes to load the huge files in the digital exhibit even with a 28.8 modem. I try several times before I succeed in downloading the whole exhibit. We often lose patience with the web, but persevere for this site. It offers everything we could want from digital art.

Image Art Criteria

Dotan's work fully meets my criteria for good art work.

1. His work bears a relationship to traditional forms of painting and sculpture, which means we know we are looking at a work of art, not just an adequate design.
2. He has used the medium or tools in the service of what he wishes to portray and not as ends in themselves (especially important in the new digital art).
3. He has expressed an original vision that is not derivative of other people's work.
4. And lastly, what I used to call "light within" a painting is accomplished here by a certain luminosity or 'life' in each of his works.

Digital Virgin

The first digital painting we see is called Virgin. This beautiful digital Venus or Virgin exists as a piece of abstract sculpture in an architechtural space. The composition, a verticle rectangle with the figure more or less in the middle, offers texture, geometry, painting and even brushstrokes. It's a moving, recognizable "painting." The artist is leading us gently into the digital space where his work exists.

Digital Dancer

The next piece, called The Dancer, is composed of brightly colored strips of twisted "metal." The vertically poised figure is framed in an architectural space. The whole piece offers dimension, movement, rhythm, color, shadow, space, feeling and architecture. These are all elements of a traditional work of art but there is no doubt that we are looking at a virtual sculpture here, one composed on the machine and displayed on the machine, yet a work that pulls us emotionally and mentally into the world of art and creativity instead of leaving us in an obviously technological environment.

The artist begins 'Phase Two' with a mural Navaho-like figure with stick tree leaves for hair and hands. In front of the mural a plaster torso sits on a pedestal whose three dimensional space is emphasized by its expertly drawn shadow on top of the base. There are human feet at the bottom, resting on a carpet with a receeding pattern. This piece is a pair with the next one where the 'plaster' torsoe assumes more importance. Dotan's digital 'plaster' torsos are one his ties to traditional art and help us to recall centuries of art history while browsing his new medium on the web. One of two architectural windows is covered and has an image of feet and a pepsi sign while the window next to it reveals a skyscraper in the background.

Uri Dotan's Digital World

As I am scrolling through these paintings, a world begins to emerge, full of the artist's own real or imaginary artifacts, and the artist's own vocabulary of architecture, symbols, design, and ideas.

By the fifth image, Hummingbird, the artist moves out of the now familiar rectangle and has the walls at an angle forming a corner. The image comes forward out of the frame, out of the case, out of the boundaries. It is a complicated unidentifiable abstract form with its shadow on the wall. The back corner space is defined by the faint image of a train engine.

There are eight more images and they are all wonderful. The artist Dotan builds his spaces and fills them with things like Buddha and Buddha's reflection, encased in reflective 'metal' strapping that is twisted and turned to form a pattern.

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Painters From Galicia

The artist repeats motifs of staircases, windows, feet (even elephant feet) and gradually builds up to one of my favorite pieces called Painters From Galicia. Galicia is a district in southern Poland where most of the Jewish inhabitants were killed during World War II. It is a rural district; some people survived by hiding out in barns or even underground. Uri Dotan's "Painters From Galicia' is a Digital 'Guernica' for me. Just as Picasso's famous mural Guernica depicted the horrors of war and the bravery of men, I believe Dotan is trying to express something in the same tradition. How optimistic that he chooses a whole new technology to teach us once again a grim lesson of history through art.

Dotan's Technical Information and Background

Uri Dotan works on a Silicon Graphics Indigo2 Extreme at 150 megaherz, 80 MB RAM, and uses a 20 inch monitor. He makes pencil sketches then uses Alias/Wavefront to build 2d sketches into 3d models and position them in 3d space. He selects the camera angle and applies colors, textures and light.

Dotan also makes 300 dpi resolution editions of his images on watercolor paper. These are done by Nash Editions in California. This is Dotan's way of "selling" his work because, for the time being, he can't sell the work on a computer screen. Microcharging software is expected to be available this year. At that time Dotan, and other digital artists, might be able to collect a micro-fee, perhaps a quarter of a cent, or a quarter, or some small amount for each "hit" to a digital art web page. The new software will make processing small amounts of money feasible, whereas today credit card charges carry high processing fees unsuitable for an activity like web browsing.

Uri Dotan was raised in Israel and moved to New York City seven years ago. You can reach him at Uri Dotan. He is also having a virtual exhibit at the The Williams Gallery.

©1995 by Sherry Miller. Miller was an art critic for New England papers for ten years before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area and building the web site SherryArt. You can reach her at Sherry Miller.