Petra Cortright

Petra Cortright’s core practice is the creation and distribution of digital and physical images using consumer or corporate softwares. She became renowned for making self-portrait videos that use her computer’s webcam and default effects tools, which she would then upload to YouTube and caption with spam text. Cortright’s paintings on aluminium, linen, paper, or acrylic are created in Photoshop using painting software and appropriated images, icons, and marks.  The digital files are endlessly modifiable, but at a “decisive moment” they are translated into two-dimensional objects. They become finite, yet their range of motifs and marks, and their disorienting perspectives and dimensions suggest dynamic change.

Cortright lives and works in Los Angeles; she has exhibited at a number of American institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2014); CCA: The Center of Contemporary Arts, Sante Fe (2011); Chelsea Art Museum, New York (2007); MCA Chicago (2015) and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2019). She has also exhibited extensively across the world, including: Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing (2014); Lab for Emerging Arts and Performance (LEAP), Berlin (2014); Espai Cultural Caja Madrid, Barcelona (2011); Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) (2015); Kunsthaus Langenthal, Switzerland (2015) and Kunstlerhaus Bremen, Germany (2015). Cortright participated in the 10th Biennale de Lyon and the Venice Biennale’s Internet Pavilion (2009)s and The New York Underground Film Festival in New York (2008).