Ehrlich Steinberg is pleased to present rare historic works from 1983 by Paris-based American artist Joseph Nechvatal for Place des Vosges 2025. This series introduces an important technique within Nechvatal’s practice, developed through the mechanical enlargement of graphite drawings into photographic blow-ups depicting abstract and figurative compositions. It marks a crucial phase in the artist’s oeuvre, typifying an early period most closely associated with New York’s East Village and No Wave scenes of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The exhibited works disrupt the autonomy of drawing, photography, and painting, reflecting No Wave’s broader resistance to medium specificity amid an increasingly commercial art market. The mechanical enlargement process translates the layered accumulations of tracings, quotations, and motifs in Nechvatal’s drawings into homogenized photographic surfaces. Sparse deployments of oil stick and enamel paint function as residual traces of authorship and nods to repressed expression. The primacy of gesture is displaced in favor of a sleekly mediated image field. Partially registered figures, objects, and abstract elements dissolve into indeterminate grounds of gray and beige tonalities.
Nechvatal’s approach articulates a cultural climate shaped by the constant threat of Cold War escalation, psychic suspension, and heightened paranoia. Such instability reflects the broader discursive conditions of the 1980s, when the circulation of images was increasingly theorized as both ubiquitous and estranging. Viewed retrospectively, the series further anticipates the conditions of contemporary image culture - collapsed originality obscured by relentless replication and perception shaped by anxiety and overload.
Recognized as a central early figure in digital art, related examples from the series have recently entered the collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Within Nechvatal’s oeuvre, the works delineate the passage from a largely analog, drawing-based practice rooted in quotation, visual sampling, and accumulation to later engagements with computer-assisted image production, algorithms, and digital viruses, situating his work within a broader lineage of technologically mediated art.
Joseph Nechvatal (b. 1951, Chicago, IL) lives and works in Paris, FR. Nechvatal holds a BFA from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL (1973) and an MFA from Cornell University, New York, NY (1975). He gained his PhD in the Philosophy of Art and New Technology at The Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts (CAiiA) at the University of Wales, Newport, UK (1999). Previous exhibitions have taken place at Documenta 8; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole; The Butler Institute of American Art; The Saline Royale, Arc-et-Senans; The Whitney Museum of American Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Venice Biennale and Museo Reina Sofía. In 2023, Nechvatal was included in the group exhibition Who You Staring At?: Visual culture of the no wave stage in the 1970s and 1980s at Centre Pompidou. From 1999 to 2014, Nechvatal taught in the MFA Graduate Department at the School of Visual Arts in New York City (SVA). His book of essays Towards an Immersive Intelligence: Essays on the Work of Art in the Age of Computer Technology and Virtual Reality (1993-2006) was published by Edgewise Press in 2009. Nechvatal’s work is included in numerous permanent collections such as Centre Pompidou; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The National Gallery of Art, Washington; Moderna Museet; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
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Place des Vosges 2025 includes eleven international galleries:
- Alexandre Gallery, New York
- Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
- Corbett vs Dempsey, Chicago
- Ehrlich Steinberg, Los Angeles
- Hans Goodrich, Chicago
- Harlesden High Street, London
- Heritage, Paris
- hunt kastner, Prague
- Kerlin Gallery, Dublin
- Margot Samel, New York
- Triangolo, Cremona
Installation view. Photo-Mechanical Blow-Ups, 1983 by Joseph Nechvatal, 2025. Place des Vosges, Paris.
Joseph Nechvatal, Apocalyptic Dream, 1983. Graphite on paper, 17.25 x 14.25 in. (43.82 x 36.2 cm) framed.
Joseph Nechvatal, Force, 1983. Oil, graphite, photo-mechanical blow-up on paper mounted on board, 20 x 22 in. (50.8 x 55.88 cm).
Joseph Nechvatal, Just a Thought II, 1983. Oil, graphite, photo-mechanical blow-up on paper mounted on board, 31 x 40 in. (78.74 x 101.6 cm).
Joseph Nechvatal, Just a Thought I, 1983. Oil, graphite, photo-mechanical blow-up on paper mounted on board, 31 x 40 in. (78.74 x 101.6 cm).
Photos: Grégory Copitet