Jessica Silverman is elated that artist Trevor Paglen has joined our roster and entrusted us with a solo exhibition of new prints from four award-winning series that explore the outer limits of visual perception. Opening January 8 and running through February 28, the show titled, “The Horizon Waved, and Nothing Was Certain: 2006-2026,” features previously unseen landscapes and skyscapes that investigate computer vision, drone surveillance, secret military bases, and unidentified objects in Earth’s orbit. These pictures are the final ones to emerge from the series that established Paglen as the unrivaled exemplar of the “techno sublime.” As philosopher Brian Holmes explains, Paglen transforms art into “a crossroads of critical analysis and cosmic experience… creating encounters with currently invisible realities.” Put simply: imagine Philip K. Dick meets J.M.W. Turner in Mountain View, CA.
Paglen is a conceptually adventurous MacArthur "Genius" with a talent for profound beauty that art historian Hal Foster has described as “Malevich in the sky with diamonds.” In exploring the hazy borders between knowing and not-knowing, the perceptible and the undetectable, secrecy and revelation, Paglen manifests documentary work that feels like science fiction. He also confronts chilling realities with an uncanny optimism that sustains hope and a romantic missionary spirit. With "The Horizon Waved, and Nothing Was Certain: 2006-2026," Paglen delivers an exhibition of technically complex, historically relevant, and emotionally resonant images, which reveal the hidden systems that shape our world.
Trevor Paglen (b. 1974, Camp Springs, MD) received his BA from University of California, Berkeley; MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and PhD in Geography from UC Berkeley. He has received numerous awards, including the Nam June Paik Art Center Prize, MacArthur Fellowship, Aperture West Prize, and Artadia New York. Paglen has enjoyed solo exhibitions at Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; MCA San Diego; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno; Fondazione Prada, Milan; Barbican Centre, London; and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, among others. Paglen’s work is featured in recent and forthcoming exhibitions at Moody Center for the Arts, Houston; MCA Australia, Sydney; Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil; Jeu de Paume, Paris; Jewish Museum, Berlin; and Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan. His work is in numerous permanent collections including Baltimore Museum of Art; Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA; Dallas Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; MFA Boston; MFA Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Thoma Foundation, Dallas; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. Paglen lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He is represented by Pace and Jessica Silverman.