What makes for the appropriate stuff and matter of art? Back in 1917, Mr Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” – the Dadaist’s famed sculpture of a porcelain urinal – drew upon the physical objects that made up the things of 20th-century life. Today’s artists, however, have richer hunting grounds to exploit. No longer limited to the material world, contemporary artists may now draw upon the 21st century’s all-encompassing digital ether of social media, GIFs and online networks. More than 100 years on from Mr Duchamp’s act of artistic inclusivity, the material palette from which practitioners might draw has expanded rapidly to encompass realms rather less earthy than Mr Duchamp’s urinal.

It should surprise no one, then, to observe the rise of digital art and the growing interest in shaping code and online ephemera into the stuff of art. In a digital world, digital matter becomes a potent mode of artistic expression. The field already has its own dedicated biennale, The Wrong, a decentralised exhibition whose next edition opens on 1 November, as well as a series of specialist galleries and growing interest from international institutions and museums. To mark the year ahead, we have selected five exhibitions and events that may further burnish the reputation of this burgeoning field.

A transatlantic collaboration between two organisations devoted to digital art, Re-Figure-Ground is the inaugural exhibition in the London-based arebyte Gallery’s 2019 programme and has been guest-curated by Ms Kelani Nichole from Transfer gallery in New York. It ought to make a fine gateway for anyone interested in exploring the field and features works from artists such as Ms Claudia Hart, Mr Alan Warburton, Pussykrew and digital avatar LaTurbo Avedon, all of whom have contributed pieces that feed into arebyte’s 2019 theme of home. As an entry point to digital art in 2019, this promises to be an exemplary guide.

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Chief among the vanguard of digital artists is teamLab, an interdisciplinary collective that brings together designers, artists, scientists, engineers and programmers to create interactive installations that burst with light and colour in a bid to break down barriers between artwork and visitor. Its work reached its apogee in 2018 when the collective opened the Mori Building Digital Art Museum in the Odaiba entertainment district of Tokyo. In 2019, teamLab will follow this success with an ambitious programme of digital installations planned for Hiroshima Castle, a 16th-century fortress that was destroyed by the atomic bomb. Designed as part of the collective’s Digitized City art project, teamLab’s installation will feature a chessboard of oversized, glowing eggs placed on the foundation stones of the original castle, with visitors invited to push and wobble the objects to set colours and sounds resonating around the environment.

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Physical and online gallery spaces devoted to digital art may not be new, but the inauguration of Atelier des Lumières in the 11th arrondissement of Paris in April 2018 was nonetheless welcome. Housed in a 19th-century foundry, it gives more than 3,300sqm of space to exhibitions that digitally project artworks across the building’s floors, ceilings and 10m-high walls. In 2018, it set the golden oeuvre of symbolist artist Mr Gustav Klimt rushing through the foundry space, enlivening a moment in art history through the application of contemporary digital techniques. This year, the French film director Mr Thomas Vanz is to be given free rein to display his digital artwork Verse, a spectacular audiovisual field trip through the achievements of astrophysics. Expect supernovae, black holes and gaseous nebula to take centre stage.

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An exhibition at MoMA in New York is always cause for curiosity, and New Order is no exception. Organised by Ms Michelle Kuo, the museum’s Marlene Hess curator of painting and sculpture, the exhibition leads the visitor through MoMA’s enviable permanent collection, picking out artworks produced since the turn of the millennium that explore the capacities of technology to generate new forms of expression. Alongside digital artworks, New Order is also slated to display pieces executed in media such as 3D printing, vacuum-formed plastic and ultrasound gel. While artists can now raid the digital toolbox with impunity, the USP of New Order may be its ability to stress that digital techniques remain, as the museum states, “stubbornly tied to the physical world”.

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Intended as the jewel in the crown of Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, the soon-to-open M+ museum of contemporary visual culture is set to be one of the art world’s major highlights. Housed in a building designed by celebrated architects Herzog & de Meuron, the museum already possesses a certain gravitas, even before you consider the work being done by chief curator Mr Doryun Chong and his team with M+’s permanent collection. Perhaps the most striking addition to date has been the acquisition of the archive of Seoul-based digital artist group Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, a deal in which the group’s entire back-catalogue and all future productions will be added to the M+ collection. The move will not only make M+ the permanent home for the group’s art, which takes the form of social or politically astute text-based animations presented in synchronised music composed by the artists, but it will position digital art as a key foundation for the new museum’s future practice.

westkowloon.hk