Though research has emerged linking excessive social media use with anxiety and depression, our collective internet addiction shows no sign of slowing down. The fictionalized, digital selves we present to the online world comprise the bulk of some people’s social interactions. Australian artist Robin Eley interrogates the divide between one’s physical and digital identity in his new show “Prism,” opening at 101/Exhibit’s Hollywood location on October 18.
For his new series of paintings and sculptures, Eley uses both analog and digital techniques, exploiting the paradoxes of his chosen media to further his conceptual goals. He presents weighty, convincing bodies interacting in a digitized space. His portraits are designed on Maya, a 3D modeling software, and then painted by hand. Eley challenges himself to make the artificial-looking blueprints into human figures that are as natural as possible. Almost hyperrealist, his monochromatic paintings bathed in colored light are decorated with triangular patterns that evoke the geometric flatness of the graphics his software produces.
Accompanying the portraits are 3D-printed busts that manifest directly from his digital designs. Eley assembles and buffs these pieces by hand, once again adding an element of the human touch to his process. But, as he points out, these clear, prismatic pieces have no distinguishing facial characteristics and cast no shadow, alluding to the often one-dimensional online personas we project.
“Prism” opens October 18 at 101/Exhibit and will be on view through November 29.
Painter Allison Zuckerman’s work pulls from the past and digital present of art history to craft amalgamated depictions of women. She first designs her works digitally, then prints them on the canvas before applying paint to the creation. This year has brought multiple museum exhibitions for the artist, including stints at Akron Art Museum and Herziliya Museum and the University of Florida.
It appears that sculptor Joe Reginella has once again erected a memorial statue marking a fictional occurrence in New York City. This time, it’s a story that purports that former Mayor Ed Koch sent wolves into the subways of the city to ward off graffiti artists during his tenure, and according to the Ed Koch Wolf Foundation (who supposedly put up the memorial), the creatures are still the reason behind missing tourists in the Big Apple.
Bonsai, the art of growing miniature trees, has a magic power to transport us to another world, a quality shared by 
Filipino artist