Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs: Avery Singer (born in 1987) is the very embodiment of this new generation of artists who, armed with digital technologies, are shaking the traditional foundations of painting with calculated insolence. Born and raised in New York by projectionist artist parents, she grew up in the bohemian atmosphere of TriBeCa, steeped in the vapors of paint and the hum of projectors at the MoMA where her father worked. A childhood steeped in celluloid and the scent of turpentine.
The first striking characteristic of her work is her almost obsessive relationship with digital technology. Singer uses the 3D modeling software SketchUp as others use their brush, thus transforming the architect’s tool into a weapon of massive deconstruction. She creates robotic figures and geometric spaces that seem straight out of an ’80s sci-fi movie, but with the surgical precision of a computer program. It’s as if Max Ernst had access to a MacBook Pro.
But make no mistake, this is not just a technical feat. Singer plays with the codes of contemporary art like a cat with a dead mouse. Her early works, notably in the exhibition The Artists at the Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler gallery in 2013, are a biting satire of the art world. She depicts robot-artists in stereotypical situations: studio visits, meetings with collectors, artistic performances. It’s Bertolt Brecht meets Black Mirror, a critical distancing that makes the guardians of contemporary art grit their teeth.
The second hallmark of her work is her complex relationship with art history. Singer engages with historical avant-gardes—Constructivism, Futurism, Cubism—but not as a respectful student. She cannibalizes, digests, and regurgitates them in a completely new visual language. Take, for example, her reappropriation of Naum Gabo’s Head of a Woman: she transforms it into a recurring motif, an interchangeable mask for her robotic characters. It’s an approach that would have made Clement Greenberg howl and Walter Benjamin smile.
In her practice, Singer uses the airbrush with maniacal precision, creating surfaces so smooth they become almost clinical. She pushes this logic even further with her Michelangelo ArtRobo machine, a computer-controlled airbrush system. It’s as if she seeks to eliminate any trace of the human hand while creating works profoundly human in their questioning. This apparent contradiction lies at the heart of her approach: using technology to explore the limits of humanity.
Theodor Adorno would likely have seen Singer’s work as a perfect manifestation of his theory of “technique as ideology”. She uses the tools of the culture industry—3D software, automated airbrushes—to create works that critique that very industry. It’s an intellectual tour de force reminiscent of the best pages of Dialectic of Enlightenment.
Singer’s more recent works, notably those presented in Reality Ender at Hauser & Wirth, mark a significant evolution. She introduces autobiographical elements and reflects on collective trauma, particularly through her personal experience of September 11, 2001. It’s as if Jean-François Lyotard met Don DeLillo in an East Village bar to discuss the end of grand narratives.
Her recent works incorporate references to internet culture—memes, Wojak characters—while maintaining a dialogue with art history. She thus creates a dizzying bridge between high culture and digital culture, between MoMA and 4chan. This kind of transgression annoys purists but propels art forward.
Singer’s practice represents a radical break from the conventions of painting while remaining deeply rooted in its history. She uses technology not as a gimmick but as a means to interrogate our relationship with images, reality, and authenticity. Her work raises fundamental questions about what it means to be an artist in the digital age, when the line between real and virtual becomes increasingly blurred.
This approach recalls Jean Baudrillard’s theory of the simulacrum: in Singer’s world, the copy becomes more real than the original, the virtual more tangible than the physical. But unlike some artists who merely ride the wave of digital trends, Singer digs deeper. She explores the philosophical and existential implications of our relationship with technology.
For those who still think painting is dead, Singer proves it’s very much alive, but capable of mutating into something new, more complex, more ambiguous. She creates art that reflects our era in all its technological complexity and existential uncertainty. It’s art that refuses the ease of spectacle while being profoundly spectacular.
