I'm very happy to be part of this great exhibition curated by Saatchi Art.
Continuum highlights the possibilities of art and technology, and proposes new media as an ever-expanding frontier that artists of varied mediums and backgrounds can approach. Even Andy Warhol, a leading artist of the 20th century, experimented with the computer technology of his time to produce digital drawings, bringing his iconic subjects—Debbie Harry, Marilyn Monroe, Campbell’s soup cans—to the digital realm. With the earliest of these drawings produced in 1985, Warhol’s experiments can be considered a progenitor of the seamless shift between traditional and new mediums we see today. In this respect, new media is not to be conceptualized as a discrete movement on the art historical timeline, but rather a fundamental shift in the tools, mediums, and subjects available to artists, resulting in new modes of creating and interacting with art.
In general, and among the artists featured in this exhibition, new media can refer to participatory artworks that utilize technology as both medium and subject, as we see with the user-activated AR prints of Francesca Fini and Diego Esquivel. It can also refer to the use of technology as a means to an end, whereby digital tools are used to create a static image, such as the experimental photo collages of JCT Li and Sander Steins.