John F. Simon Jr.'s fifth solo exhibition in New York, Endless Victory, was presented by Sandra Gering Gallery at its former Chelsea location.
The exhibition featured Endless Victory and Endless Bounty, two new editions in which John Simon expands both the content and presentation of his software art. By incorporating a wide range of media and programming styles in the software, Simon makes it possible to combine the central aspects of his artistic practice — coding and drawing. The screens that display the software are framed within elegant compositions of intricately cut and engraved Plexiglas. The first edition, Endless Victory, is inspired by Mondrian's unfinished painting of 1943/44, Victory Boogie-Woogie. Using traffic flow in New York City as a motif, Simon improvises on the endless merging, dividing, overtaking, turning, starting and stopping motions that surround him. This piece continues themes begun in Simon's earlier work, ComplexCity (2000).The second edition, Endless Bounty, emerges from the tension between Simon's urban lifestyle and his longing for nature. The software flips between the two ideals displaying maps, drawings, photographs and three-dimensional models in a continual effort to capture our gaze.
In the installation at Sandra Gering Gallery, four pieces from each edition displayed a broad view of the software's variations. The word endless, used in both titles, was a generating concept for the software art. Because the pieces are software based, the visual elements are generated in real time and continually vary. The expansive range of imagery is emphasized when multiple pieces are viewed together. Simon continues to develop the sculptural aspects of his work by treating the LCD screen as another material in his compositions and using his software to generate the laser cut framing elements. The dimensional thickness of the framing plays against the third dimension simulated on the flat screen.
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In October 2005, The Whitney Museum of American Art and Printed Matter, Inc. co-published John F. Simon, Jr.'s new software and book, Mobility Agents: A Computational Sketchbook. Mobility Agents was featured as a "gate page" on Artport, the Whitney's online gallery space for commissioned net art projects, at the same time that it became available as a book and CD set.
