Artists are increasingly using digital technology to send their viewers into unique, imaginative and fantastical landscapes. Is this a response to the increasing corporatization and uniformity of the lived environment, compounded with the increased presence of virtual spaces in day-to-day lives? Digital technology itself is the key player in a remarkable new liberating and empowering landscape, one that is segmented, hyper-everything and horizontal. Artists are working within digital environments to raise critical awareness and shape culture and identity. Is this reaction a type of Romanticism? An embrace and assertion over digital surroundings? These New Romantics do share the acute criticality and the almost delusional idealism of their nineteenth century counterparts, but maintain a much more nuanced and elevated relationship to societal trends and emerging technology; configuring new territories, not shying away from them. “At this frontier,” contends Monaghan, "artists have more to say, more ways to say it, and our audience is easier to find.”

About Jonathan Monaghan:
Jonathan Monaghan is an artist working across a range of media, including prints, sculpture and computer animated video, to produce otherworldly objects and narratives. Drawing on wide-ranging sources, such as historical artworks and science fiction, his fantastical pieces uncover subconscious anxieties associated with technology and consumerism. Past exhibitions include The Sundance Film Festival, The Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, and The Palais de Tokyo in Paris. His work has been featured in several media outlets including The New York Times, Vogue, and The Washington Post. His work sits in numerous public and private collections including The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Washington D.C. Art Bank Collection.

www.jonathanmonaghan.com