ANTHONY AZIZ
(B. 1961, USA)
SAMMY CUCHER
(B. 1958, Peru)
Anthony Aziz and Sammy Cucher have worked together as artistic duo Aziz + Cucher since 1992. Experimenting across a variety of media including digital imaging, sculpture, animation, and video-installation, their work is marked by a distinctive concern for technology’s impact on the body and society.
Regarded as innovators in the field of post-photography, Aziz + Cucher have long held a cross disciplinary conversation between the painterly and photographic. Not only were earlier series, such as Dystopia (1994-95), based on the conventions of portraiture established in the Renaissance, but their production involved a kind of electronic painting where pigment and paint were replaced by pixels and data. The dynamic relationship between these two mediums tipped decisively towards the painterly in later series, such as Synaptic Bliss (2004-2013) and Scenapse (2007-2013) where colour and line became key expressive elements.
More recent series have encompassed ideas of collective consciousness, political and social unrest, and the effects of technological mediation. Fascinated by the pictorial storytelling and exacting craftsmanship of classical weaving, Aziz + Cucher’s tapestry series Some People Tapestry Cycle (2014-17) looks to evoke the senselessness and futility of these ongoing conflicts and the anxiety of the historical moment we all inhabit.
Aziz + Cucher have been exhibited globally, notably at the 46th Venice Biennale, with works held in museum collections including: the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The New School Art Collection, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Based in Brooklyn, the artists are members of the Fine Arts faculty at Parsons School of Design (New York) and are recipients of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in both 2017 and 2022.