ORCHID.seasons, a new body of work by artist Matthew Morrocco, provides a potential antidote to the problematic issue of privacy on the internet. In Winter, the second iteration of the artist’s four-part project, the orange (fall) figure has become a cold blue who traverses mountains and frolics in snow and ice. Throughout the series, Morrocco inhabits the role of a faceless character named Orchid, who evades identification in favor of an abstracted self, eliding the possibility of signification as a particular person. The show is accompanied by an augmented reality ORCHID.app that allows users to curate virtual and individualized iterations of the photographs. The app will give viewers greater authority over their experience of the work and troubles traditional codified rules of engagement with art objects. Combining the abstract Orchid figure with the opportunity to cultivate one’s own viewing experience enables a uniquely personal exploration of the exhibition and the artist’s work. The viewer maintains control as the work investigates the painful loss of privacy and autonomy.
In an age of big data and social media, our private information is mined, used, and sold to feed us fabricated information and new products we don’t need. Today, the spectator cannot maintain autonomy. The consumer has become a commodity who is collected, marketed and re-sold back to itself. To participate in this system of social media and internet-based exploration is to be subordinated to the rules of engagement--content regulation, data collection, use and sale of our own marketable data and privacy. While there is, at times, a social necessity for participating in this system, it is as if, in the harrowing words of Judith Butler, “the price of existence is subordination.” For Morrocco, his suit is a coping mechanism, a cloak of invisibility which grants access to experiences beyond the confines of personal identity. Like the eponymous crypto-currency the exhibition is named after, the suit grants the artist access to the world, but maintains his anonymity, placing a barrier between his person and his objectified presence. Set against bright yet brittle winter landscapes, the Winter iteration of this show presents a figure rapturously exploring the joy of solitude in the landscape.