In his painting practice, Alberto
Zamora Ruiz deals with phenomena in the internet’s grey areas. On
channels such as Facebook, Youtube, 4chan, or Reddit, the artist follows
the emergence of an increasingly complex internet culture that assigns
its own terms to trends and user behaviours, essentially developing its
own language.
With the search word
“Battlestations,” for example, one can find a plethora of photographs of
home computer workstations on the internet. The term initially referred
to the workstations of gamers who actually use their computer setups
for “battle.” Meanwhile, however, it is used more generally for the
configuration of a computer, monitor, and accessories. Internet users
celebrate their hardware as a door to virtual worlds. Between the bright
digital promise of glaring computer screens and the lonely sadness
between cables, Alberto Zamora Ruiz documents these stations.
The trend of the “reaction
video,” in which people record themselves watching series or movie
trailers, can be seen as an escalation from the ubiquitous selfie. On
the living room couch, it is a matter of producing the best facial
expression for what is happening on screen. Reaction videos may be
clicked on millions of times. With his paintings, the artist draws the
viewer back to the real individuals behind the seemingly virtual
occurrences.
As the blending of virtuality and
reality takes on an increasing weight in our everyday lives, Alberto
Zamora Ruiz devotes himself to a precise study of individual phenomena
in internet culture, absurd as they may seem, and creates the
possibility of approaching these confusing developments.
Alberto Zamora Ruiz (*1982,
Mexico City) lives in Stuttgart. He studied with Holger Bunk at the
Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart and was recently awarded a grant
in Mexico City (FONCA-Grant 2016 – Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las
Artes, México).
Text: Anka Wenzel
