Influenced by her technology-free childhood, renowned German artist and UMass- Amherst art professor Jenny Vogel explores the themes of the human experience in this digital age through her “Machines Choose You” series.
Now until Thursday, Oct. 31 greater Gardner residents can experience the interactive art series created by Vogel at the East Wing Gallery in Mount Wachusett Community College. The gallery is open Monday to Thursday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
“Many of my students are transfers from MWCC so being able to make the connection and see where my students come from is a reason why I wanted to display my exhibit there,” she said. “The energy of the space is also a reason because it’s not like the usual white-walled art gallery in New York City.”
Vogel said the pieces in her most recent series are a combination of printed digital photos that she drew on with pen and 3D models she created with computer software that she also printed. She said “Machines Choose You” focuses on exploring the intersection between the physical space and the virtual space.
“I started with this modeling software to create those virtual bodies. So when you’re looking at them in a physical space they look kind of realistic, but there’s something off with them,” she said. “I think even though our virtual space becomes much more like our physical space, there’s always still something like the physicality that’s missing.”
“Another aspect that’s really important to me is to take this virtual space and somehow bring it back into the physical,” she said. “The set of drawings that I’m showing in this exhibition is actually a combination of photographs that I then printed and I draw on so it’s very physical, and my hands are in it, literally and figuratively.”
What brought Jenny Vogel to the United States?
Back in her homeland of Germany, Vogel said she first wanted to be an actress but soon realized that it wasn’t for her and moved to New York City to study art at Hunter College. The freedom of art schools in the United States, Vogel said is one of the many reasons why she decided to continue her art career here.
Vogel currently lives in Brooklyn, New York and she commutes weekly to UMass Amherst where she is a full-time art professor.
She said she was looking for a professor position that was closer to her Brooklyn home and although Amherst is about three hours away she thinks it’s worth it to work in a close-knit art community.
“It’s a vibrant art department here and I really enjoy working with my colleagues,” she said. “I think the department is small but very involved and there’s a lot of internationally recognized artists who teach here at UMass Amherst.”
Vogel said she chose to work at the big state university instead of a college in NYC because it’s not just an art school and there are more opportunities for interdisciplinary work. She said the academic side of the large state institutions also gives her a wider opportunity to collaborate with other departments on lessons.
Vogel had her other work displayed in a variety of New York City galleries: Storefront Gallery, The Swiss Institute, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Gallery, and MoMA PS1 which was originally called the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center. Vogel said she also had work displayed in the Dallas Museum of Art and the McKinney Contemporary Gallery in Dallas, Texas, and in the San Francisco Camerawork Gallery in California.
She also had her art displayed internationally in the Arnolfini Art Gallery in the United Kingdom, and KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin.
Vogel’s early education at the Waldorf School influences her art
Vogel said she has always been interested in the relationship that humans have with innovation and technology. She said she thinks this interest is rooted in the fact she grew up without a television and had a holistic-centered Waldorf education in Germany.
The Waldorf School was founded by Austrian philosopher and social reformist, Rudolf Steiner in the early 1900s. Vogel said Steiner’s ideas were to give children an education that combines the mind and the body to make a very wholesome education with a lot of movement and hands-on learning.
She said the arts were involved in their curriculum and they learn to do a lot of crafts.
“An example of a lesson plan for biology would be in this school is asking the question about what is biology? And how do plants grow?” she said. “Then instead of reading in a textbook you would grow wheat, and then you harvest the wheat, and you grind the grain and make bread.”
During her time in art college, Vogel said she started as a painter but a digital art class sparked her curiosity about what art she could make with the help of technology. Because she was not allowed to explore technology as a child she had an urge to learn as much as she could.
“I had always been afraid of computers, they were this very foreign object for me,” she said. “I thought, you need to know coding before you can use computers but I discovered that computers can be a tool for art making and a gateway to video arts and storytelling.”
After she learned the different ways she could use computers, digital cameras, and other devices to make images she began to want to understand the relationship between humanity and technology. Vogel said she never wants to demonize technology through her art but encourages people to ask questions about the effects it has on humanity.
“I wanted to try it because I wasn’t allowed to before and I never really agreed with the demonization of technology,” she said. “Of course, I think more critically of technology and I do want to ask questions about what this invocation actually do to how we are interacting with people?”
This article originally appeared on Gardner News: Artist Jenny Vogel’s exhibit “Machines Choose You” on display at MWCC
