I feel like most people would have a tough time imagining something more ideologically opposed to art than data analytics. Even the phrase sounds unartistic, more at home in investment banking than gallery houses. Art just feels too subjective to be encapsulated by the rigid world of sums and figures. But perhaps that’s the wrong perspective. In the Royale Project’s new group show, “Off the Charts,” we see a collection of artists engaging with how data can be encapsulated by art.

While numbers are objective, the visualization and illustration of them is far from it, and can take surprising and beautiful turns. Take, for example, the computer generated, two-toned painting from Ken Lum, The Path from Sanity to Madness (2012). A labyrinth, like all puzzles, forces your brain to act in a programmatic way. When you view Lum’s work, you become a computer working your way methodically through a maze from entrance to exit. Just like in life, you must find your way through it – though this maze in particular is much more easy than the maze of life.

Other works in the show draw not upon computer generation but upon the natural world, attempting to physicalize things we only know through the lens of data. Sway to the Sun: Motion No. 1  (2021) from Luftwerk is one such sculpture. The neon light, twisting and spiraling until shooting upwards like an out of control firework, is a visualization of the growth of a peppermint plant. All plants twist and turn to chase the sun and respond to wind and rain, but their slow development makes it impossible to perceive except through careful measurement. This sculpture freezes in place what is an otherwise invisible dance.

But others in the show are not so abstractedly related to our experience as dancing plants and computer mazes. The two works from Josh Callaghan, Apocalypto Ticket Sales by Week (2018) and Work Place Injury by Type (2008), are fascinating because of the divide between the minimalist beauty of the work and absurd nature of the subject. Particularly Apocalypto, which juts proudly into the space as steeply inclined graph made of red steel. Their titles being the only insight into their design, they call into question the pure aesthetic qualities of data visualization and the power of artistic context.

Royale Projects
432 S. Alameda St.
Los Angeles, California 90013
Thru Sep 30th, 2021