Cory Arcangel
Artist Spotlight
Cory Arcangel Makes the Digital World Sing
When the Whitney Museum of American Art devoted a major solo exhibition to Cory Arcangel in 2011, the art world had a rare opportunity to see the full sweep of a practice that had been quietly rewriting the rules of contemporary art for over a decade. The show, titled "Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools," filled the museum's galleries with hacked video games, YouTube compilations, and software drawings that felt simultaneously playful and profoundly serious. It was a landmark moment for an artist who had spent years working at the intersection of pop culture and digital technology, and it confirmed… Continue reading
Artists in conversation
Jon Rafman
Rafman creates video and digital works drawn from found online content, gaming environments, and internet culture, sharing Arcangel's conceptual approach to appropriating and recontextualizing digital material. His practice similarly investigates how screen based technologies shape contemporary experience.
Ryan Trecartin
Trecartin produces video and installation works deeply embedded in the aesthetics and logic of digital communication and online culture, aligning with Arcangel's engagement with contemporary media and technology. Both artists use screen culture as both form and content in their conceptual practice.
Artists who inspired them
Nam June Paik
Paik pioneered video art and the use of television and electronic technology as artistic media, establishing the foundational framework within which Arcangel's software and screen based work operates. His playful yet critical relationship to broadcast technology directly prefigures Arcangel's approach to consumer electronics.
Andy Warhol
Warhol's appropriation of mass media imagery and pop culture as fine art content is a clear conceptual precursor to Arcangel's use of video games, YouTube videos, and commercial software as artistic raw material. Arcangel has directly cited Warhol's relationship to popular culture as a touchstone for his own practice.
John Cage
Cage's conceptual and process driven approach to music and art, particularly his use of systems and chance operations, deeply informs Arcangel's algorithmic and software based methods. Arcangel has referenced Cage as a key influence on how he thinks about instruction, process, and indeterminacy in art making.
