Charles Atlas’s ‘The Mathematics of Consciousness’ lives in the brain of the artist

Good artwork is commonly made lesser in its exhibition—framed by the sterility of white partitions, its viewers can wrestle to immerse itself absolutely in its aesthetic and thematic intrigue. The tough gentle extends to their faces, producing the sensation that they, too, are on show. Charles Atlas’s The Mathematics of Consciousness, a half-hour-or-so-long projection, rejects the customs of the standard gallery area. It’s bordered partly by coated home windows, and partly by the brick wall of the expansive essential corridor at Pioneer Works. It’s a site-specific set up within the truest sense of the phrase, constructed for the structure of the area it lives in. The exhibition is made stronger, and extra immersive, by an unique rating from musician and collaborator Lazar Bozic. A predetermined size for viewing—which requires the remainder of the room’s darkness—lessens the anxieties surrounding the act of consuming artwork, and consequently, the artwork itself can really take middle.

A pioneer within the subject of “media dance,” Atlas makes work that merges the artwork of movie with that of choreography. His experimentations have maintained avant-garde sensibilities within the a long time since he started his observe—maybe, partly, due to the convenience with which the artist embraces new applied sciences. This tendency is upheld in The Arithmetic of Consciousness, as Atlas’s projection “toggles between numerical fantasies, dance sequences, summary compositions, scientific ruminations, and web memes.” These pictures, composed of archival and new materials, flicker throughout the wall, divided into left and proper sections alluding to the mind.

His merging of seemingly disparate kinds is mirrored within the idea of the exhibition, which makes use of math and science for the sake of artwork, successfully calling into query the boundaries between the disciplines. The thematic questions the set up poses are made express by interludes of philosophical musings. “I contemplate area and time to be my media,” Atlas explains in a press launch. “And this has led me to a fascination with physics, consciousness, and cosmology—scientific themes woven along with my sustained curiosity in portraiture, efficiency, and dance.”

The Arithmetic of Consciousness is on show at Pioneer Works by November 20.