Addie Wagenknecht

Addie Wagenknecht's artistic practice blends conceptual art with forms of hacking and gestural abstraction. 

Wagenknecht is known for pioneering the use of drones in painting and other mechanized forms of art in the early 2000s while based in New York. 

Her works are often recognized for their experimental co-creative aspects, exploring the relationship between technology and the vulnerabilities of being alive. Previous exhibitions and works held in permanent collections include the Centre Pompidou, Istanbul Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the New Museum in New York, among others. She has collaborated with CERN, Chanel, Coinbase, and Google's Art Machine Intelligence (AMI) Group. Her work has been featured in publications such as TIME, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, Art in America, and The New York Times. Wagenknecht has held fellowships at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center in New York City, Culture Lab UK, Institute HyperWerk for Postindustrial Design in Basel (CH), and The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University.

Alone Together 2016-2018
  •      To create this series of paintings. Wagenknecht modified a Roomba to paint on canvas as it enacts custom algorithms. As the Roomba maneuvers around the canvas, Wagenknecht reclines nude. The Roomba relentlessly attempts to navigate around her body because it is designed to continue on a trajectory until the entire area has been mapped by its algorithm. The result is a void in the shape of a female form surrounded by the blue strokes of the robot. The paintings reference Yves Klein’s Anthropométries in which he directs nude female models, who he referred to as “living paintbrushes,” to press their pigment-covered bodies against canvases in front of an audience. In contrast, Wagenknecht abandons the spectacle of the objectified female nude in favor of drawing attention to what is absent. There is no performance or process documentation on display and the female form is only acknowledged in the negative space of the paintings.