Istituto Svizzero in Milano presents the group show Inflected Objects #1: Abstraction – Rising Automated Reasoning, the first exhibition in a series of five dedicated to the crumbling concept of the digital and its effects on artistic production. This first chapter of an ongoing project is curated by Melanie Bühler, founder and curator of Lunch Bytes*, and Valerio Mannucci, co-founder and editor-in-chief of NERO. Inflected Objects #1: Abstraction – Rising Automated Reasoning examines how the digital can be approached now that it has – to quote the architect and writer Keller Easterling – “escaped the box” and merged with the deep structures of society.

Computational processes can be traced everywhere and are deeply interwoven into the fabric of everyday routines. The digital can no longer be approached as a medium with distinct mechanisms and a specific aesthetic; rather, it is a pervasive force inflecting the materiality and representation of objects. Reflecting on the theme of abstraction and this techno-cultural condition more broadly, this exhibition brings together work of six European artists: Philippe Decrauzat (CH), Harm van den Dorpel (NL), Katharina Fengler (D/CH), Femke Herregraven (NL), Lars Holdhus (N) and Pierre Lumineau (CH).

As more and more processes are digitized, the world is increasingly permeated by calculative, software-enabled infrastructures running silently in the background. As a result, we increasingly depend on these abstract processes that fly airplanes, switch on traffic lights, and determine the value of the money in bank accounts.

the contemporary web are presently owned by a few private mega-companies, which capitalize on the content and data generated by the users of their platforms. Data exchanged at a rapid pace is gathered, profiled and put to work, so that more products can be sold. Social media profiles have become commodities whose exchange value is measured in likes, social capital and ultimately sold for hard cash. Never have we incorporated the logics of capitalism so intimately into our lives.

The first exhibition in the series “Inflected Objects” titled “Abstraction – Rising Automated Reasoning,” analyzes the relation between the increasingly abstracted technological and economical flows that structure our lives and influence the material objects that surround us. It investigates how abstracted, computational and economical processes leak in, mingle, underlie and structure physical materiality. “Abstraction also Comes In Bars, Bodies, Grids, Sticks, Loops and automated Reasoning” writes Pierre Lumineau in the text he contributes to the exhibition. The six artists in Inflected Objects #1: Abstraction – Rising Automated Reasoning, are each represented with artworks that address different phenomena connected to the abstracted processes that structure today’s reality.

The exhibition at Istituto Svizzero in Milano is accompanied by a website: www.inflected-objects.com. As a platform for the next chapters of the project, it also features additional commissioned artworks that are part of this first chapter dedicated to the theme of abstraction. It will start to evolve from the opening day of the exhibition and will gradually extend and accumulate content.