Prior to the pandemic, using the Internet to visit galleries from afar felt like a futuristic lark or a convenient compromise. Now that platforms such as Art Basel’s Online Viewing Rooms have come into their own as fully developed interfaces for experiencing art digitally, we can confront a knottier truth: People have been socially distant in various ways for as long as there has been a distinction between you and I; as featured works in ‘OVR: Portals’ indicate, lockdown just brought it all into stark relief. Here are a handful of young artists who negotiate contemporary conditions of alienation and possibility in a world whose technologies of connection have yet to transcend its historical power structures.
10 June 2021
