Cory Arcangel (born May 25, 1978) is an American post-conceptual artist who makes work in many different media, including drawing, music, video, performance art, and video game modifications, for which he is best known. Photoshop gradients and YouTube videos to create new works of art. His work explores the relationship between digital technology and pop culture. He is a recipient of a 2006 Creative Capital Emerging Fields Award and the 2015 Kino der Kunst Award for Filmic Oeuvre.
Early life
Arcangel grew up in Buffalo, New York and attended the Nichols School, where he was a star lacrosse goalie. At Oberlin, Arcangel met Jacob Ciocci and Paul B. Davis. Arcangel and Davis formed the Beige Programming Ensemble in 2000, and released a record of 8-bit music entitled "The 8-Bit Construction Set" by the age of 19. The 8-bit Construction Set was a record that was made on one side by the Commodore 64 and the other side by the Atari 800. A total of 4 people (Joe Beuckman, Joe Bonn, Paul B. Davis, and Cory Arcangel) were working on the project and took about 2 years to complete. One example is Super Mario Clouds (2002), a modified version of the video game Super Mario Bros. for Nintendo's NES game console in which all of the game's graphics have been removed, leaving a blue background with white clouds scrolling slowly from right to left.
I Shot Andy Warhol
I Shot Andy Warhol (2002) is a modified version of the video game Hogans Alley. It is similar to the original NES game, except that the gangsters from the original have been replaced by Andy Warhol, and the "innocents" have been replaced by the Pope, Flavor Flav, and Colonel Sanders. Both the graphics and the programs were modified, a complete binary hack, but the game is downloadable for at home play.
Totally Fucked
Totally Fucked (2003) was created by modifying Super Mario Bros.. Arcangel created a world where Mario starts on a single block-cube centered in blue nothingness. - would order two medium crust pizzas with pepperoni, mushrooms and extra cheese. The piece was commissioned by Eyebeam and implemented by Mike Frumin.
Sans Simon
In this 2004 single-channel video, Arcangel points the camera at a television screen that is playing a tape of the concert. Each time Paul Simon appears in the frame, Arcangel places his hand over Simon's image. The work is one of several videos, performances and lectures by Arcangel based on Simon and Garfunkel's live concerts.
Tetris Screwed
Tetris Screwed (2004) is based upon Tetris; modified to play at a very slow speed, where it takes about 8 hours for the blocks to fall in one complete game. The blocks can still be moved from left to right, but takes minutes for the blocks to fall pixel by pixel. Tetris Screwed is a binary hack, where the constant delay loop was written by hand in 6502 binary.
A couple thousand short films about Glenn Gould
In 2007, Film and Video Umbrella commissioned Arcangel to produce a new work, a couple of thousand short films about Glenn Gould, using tiny fragments of video, each containing a single note produced by various instruments (and some performing pets) to create an arrangement of Bach's Variation no. 1 (from the Goldberg Variations). To do this, he had to create his own video-editing software.
The Bruce Springsteen Born to Run Glockenspiel Addendum
Arcangel's 2007 LP is an intervention into Bruce Springsteen's 1975 album Born to Run. While the album's title track includes a glockenspiel part, many of the songs on the album do not. Arcangel created a glockenspiel part for each of these songs, releasing them on this vinyl record, which can be played in sync with Springsteen's original to add a 'missing' part to the original album. In addition to the LP, Arcangel has also performed the piece live.
Arcangel Surfware
In 2014, Arcangel founded Arcangel Surfware, a software publisher and merchandise company, alongside Bravado (a division of Universal Music Group). Notable brand releases include clothing made to be worn while surfing the internet, Arcangel's The Source zine series, and a first-time publishing of Tony Conrad's Music and the Mind of the World online. After ending the brand's relationship with Bravado and shutting down its webstore, Arcangel opened a flagship shop in Stavanger, Norway that was in operation from 2018 to 2019.
Lake series
In 2013 and 2014 Arcangel exhibited a series of 1920X1080 H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 looped digital file from lossless Quicktime Animation master. The pieces are displayed on 70" flat screens using a media player. Pop culture images have had the outdated Java applet "lake" applied, creating the series of film images. With these instructions, any Photoshop user can reproduce Arcangel's abstract images on their own computer.
Various Self Playing Bowling Games (aka Beat the Champ)
Arcangel created Various Self Playing Bowling Games (aka Beat the Champ) (2011) by hacking various bowling video games (for game consoles from Atari 2600 to GameCube) to throw gutter balls. Arcangel says, "But throwing a gutter ball is just humiliating. That's what makes the piece so ridiculous, but also sad and even oppressive. The failure seems funny at first–then it flips."
Exhibitions
thumb|Arcangel in 2006
Arcangel's work has been subject of several solo museum exhibitions, including the Kunstverein in Hamburg in Hamburg, Germany, the CC Foundation in Shanghai, China, The Kitchen, New York, United States, Galleria D'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy, the Barbican Centre in London, England and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Illinois. His work has also been exhibited in many places in New York City, including the Museum of Modern Art's Color Chart, the Whitney Museum, and the New Museum.
His work is included in public collections in locations such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, Miami Art Museum, Migros Museum, and Neue Nationalgalerie. Arcangel is represented by Greene Naftali Gallery in New York, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris and Salzburg, Lisson Gallery in London, and Galerie Guy Bartschi in Geneva.
At 33, Arcangel was the youngest artist to receive an entire floor for new work with Pro Tools, his 2011 solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Other notable solo shows since have been "Power Points" (2013) and "Masters" (2012). Many of his shows include a variety of old and new work from Arcangel.
Arcangel was an Eyebeam resident from 2002 to 2006.
Solo and group exhibitions of his work have been presented at major international institutions including Electric Op at the Musée d’art de Nantes and the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Programmed Universes at MAC Lyon, and Digital Witness at LACMA. He has also participated in thematic group shows such as WORLDBUILDING: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age at the Centre Pompidou Metz and the Julia Stoschek Collection, while continuing collaborative and experimental work through venues like Rhizome @ WSA (Software as Embodied Knowledge), the Michel Majerus Estate, and Stavanger Secession (Accidents). Additional projects include performance-based installations, screenings, and lectures at institutions such as Issue Project Room, ArtCenter College of Design, Kunst Museum Winterthur, and Smilers in New York.
Personal life
Arcangel lives and works in Stavanger, Norway, where he moved in 2015. He also maintains a studio in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Arcangel is married to Hanne Mugaas, a Norwegian curator; together, they have one child. In 2009, Arcangel was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and his treatments gave him both concentration and memory issues, completely wiping out his short-term memory for a period of time.