The Public Private will be the first New York exhibition of contemporary art to explore the impact of social media and new technologies on the relationship between the public and private realm. The artworks brought together in The Public Private—several presented for the first time in the United States—address these issues from psychological, legal, and economic perspectives and use strategies ranging from hacking to self-surveillance to reflect upon the profound changes in our understanding of identity, personal boundaries, and self-representation.

Works on view include Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico’s Face to Facebook, a multimedia installation of one million Facebook profiles, which were appropriated” by the artists, filtered using facial-recognition software, and then posted on a custom-made dating website sorted by facial expressions. Eva and Franco Mattes’ The Others is a video installation composed of 10,000 photos the Mattes have acquired through a software glitch that gives remote access to personal computer files. The core of the work is not just the presentation of these images, but the act of “stealing” and moving them from the private into the public realm.

Other artists and works represented in the gallery include Jill Magid’s Evidence Locker, Luke Dubois’ Missed Connections, Wafaa Bilal’s 3rdi, Carlo Zanni’s Self Portrait with Friends, James Coupe’s Panoptic Panorama #2: Five People in a Room, Paolo Cirio’s Street Ghosts, and Ben Grosser’s Facebook Demetricator.

The Public Private is curated by Christiane Paul, an Associate Professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School and Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Artists’ tours:

Wednesday, February 27, 2013
6:30 – 8:00 p.m.
Wafaa Bilal, Paolo Cirio, and Jill Magid with curator Christiane Paul

Wednesday, March 13, 2013
6:00 – 7:30 p.m.
Luke DuBois and Eva and Franco Mattes with curator Christiane Paul

Media contest for New School students:

New School students may enter our student time-based media contest YOURS, MINE, AND OURS IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA. Contest rules and information may be downloaded here:

The Public Private student time-based media contest (Adobe PDF) or found here.

The deadline is March 15, 2013, 12:00 NOON.