If you’re tired of your woke auntie sharing ham-fisted Banksy rejects about the ruinous effect of technology on our souls over Facebook, but still yearn for a broader discussion, then Melbourne-based artist Ryan Boserio’s latest exhibition, Observance, will be chicken soup for your digital soul.
“I’m dealing a lot with identity and self-mythology and how they kind of play into one another,” Boserio says of Observance. “Online is obviously becoming increasingly important for [social] settings…most internet theorists would consider the internet to be so omnipresent that it is essentially real life, because you pretty much carry it with you everywhere and it’s embedded in almost every aspect of our lives.”
Through paintings and 3D printed character masks, Boserio investigates human identity and relationships in the digital age, a time of blurred lines between reality and fantasy and the inescapable potential of personal brand broadcasting. The easiest hot take in recent times reflects on this and contends that technology signals a death-knell to our humanity and relationships, purporting the notion that social media robs us of our ability to connect in reality or have a genuine sense of self.
Boserio rejects this, and opts to take a more celebratory stance on technology in his exhibition. “I’m a big fan of the fact that there’s nothing innate in technology that makes it react a certain way – it’s all down to the end user.
“It’s mixed feelings for me – I am celebrating it, but I’m also very fearful that if I don’t celebrate it I’ll run the risk of becoming some kind of neo-Luddite.”
Boserio’s honesty is reflected in his work: the paintings and masks range from simple aesthetic pleasures, to the meditative and downright alarming or grotesque. In structuring the exhibition, Boserio found himself influenced by science-fiction adages, particularly, Clark’s Third Law (as in, Arthur C. Clarke, best known as the screenwriter of 2001: A Space Odyssey) which states that “any technology that is sufficiently advanced will be indistinguishable from magic”. For Boserio, this law underpins much of the work in Observance.
“This whole thing plays into the idea that the more and more technologically advanced we become, the less we understand our tools. Early internet guys would have understood how your computer works, right down to the basics – like how current comes through it. Whereas now when we use it, I don’t even think about that. I think about the end goal, and there’s a big old question mark in the middle. In my mind that’s [something] that needs to be reconciled – as we become more and more technical, you would think that people would become more aware of that technology, but instead, it seems to be going in the opposite direction.”
In exploring this disconnect, Boserio builds from what he knows. Having carved out a name for himself as a graffiti artist in his native Perth, he is able to inject a tangible and complex lad aesthetic into his pieces.
“That’s a culture that I know and I feel comfortable commentating on, because it’s something that I feel an affinity for. So for making a slight criticism or even if I’m making homage, at least I know that it comes from a place of – if it’s not love, then at least its knowledge. I also recognise that not a lot of people are really touching on it. Lad culture is definitely viewed as low. It definitely has a stigma to it. But it’s a culture nonetheless, and it’s deep, and it’s subject to the same rules that all cultures are subject to.”
The most obvious example of this homage comes in the clothing choices of the paintings, but looking at the masks, there is a strong emotional narrative that can be related back to Boserio’s experiences of lad culture – the idea of broadcasting anger, intimidation, or a sense of destructive glee – these are all reflected in the wide-ranging emotional palette captured in these masks and their twisted expressions.
The choice of 3D printing as a medium is a compelling one in the context of Observance. The combination of a more traditional choice, such as paint on canvas, with 3D printing ties into the thematic narrative of the exhibition, as well as Boserio’s obvious sci-fi influences. Science-fiction narratives, which he references as ‘modern myths’ seem to be the only way for some of us to reconcile the impact that technology has on us in the digital age – moving further away from an understanding of these components and further towards how they can be adapted to suit our individual needs and desires, the inner workings of a smartphone or 3D printer seem to alien that Ray Bradbury could have written them.
Boserio is plunging himself right into the middle of this quandary while also celebrating technology’s undeniable for-better-or-worse influence at the same time; he doesn’t pretend to have all of the answers, but he wants to investigate the question. Utilising new and old mediums to explore a broad range of clear and abstract ideas – from self-mythology to lad culture and social tribal rules in the digital age – Observance is a beautifully layered and meditative work that demands your consideration.
BY ALI SCHNABEL
