Sophie Kahn

Artist Statement

My work investigates the complexity, and the poetics, of capturing the body in the digital age. I use a 3D laser scanner to create sculptures, prints, video and VR/AR artworks. This scanner was never designed to capture the human body in motion--when confronted with a moving form, the machine receives conflicting spatial coordinates and generates glitch, or 3D motion blur. I output this fragmented data as both physical and virtual works - they can be read as faux-historical relics, or as future artifacts. In my most recent series, The Divers, the dancers I scanned float as spectral, disembodied avatars, weightlessly tumbling through empty space. In all my artwork the human body is de-materialized, separated from the physical, and then re-materialized into a vastly altered form; mirroring the ways in which our selves interact with the many worlds we now inhabit.

Machines for Suffering I Life size 3D print (laser-sintered nylon), gesso, acrylic paint, UV varnish Photographed at bitforms gallery ny, 2018

Bio

Sophie Kahn is a digital artist and sculptor, whose work addresses technology’s failure to capture the unstable human body. She grew up in Melbourne, Australia, and now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She earned a BA (Hons) in Fine Art/History of Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London; a Graduate Certificate in Spatial Information Architecture from RMIT University, Melbourne; and an MFA in Art and Technology Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Sophie is the co-host of the YouTube channel File Exchange, and serves as a mentor with NewInc. Past residencies include the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Pioneer Works, Brooklyn; and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York. Recent exhibitions include Transfigured at C24 Gallery in New York, Out of Body: Sculpture Post-Photography at bitforms gallery, New York, and Machines for Suffering (solo) at Bannister Gallery, Rhode Island College, RI. Her work has been supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic, and other private funding bodies. Her work is held in public and private collections in the United States and internationally. She is a New York Foundation for the Arts Digital and Electronic Arts Fellow. Recent online exhibitions include Dematerialized with SVA, In The Bardo: Unpacking the Real on FeralFile and Synthetic Corporeality with Meet Digital Culture Centre, Milan.

www.sophiekahn.net