Gazelli Art House is pleased to announce the exclusive representation of multidisciplinary artist Michael Takeo Magruder. Takeo is a visual artist and researcher who works with new media, including real-time data, digital archives, immersive environments, mobile devices, and virtual worlds. His practice explores concepts from media criticism and aesthetic journalism to digital formalism and computational aesthetics, deploying Information Age technologies and systems to examine our networked, media-rich world. In the last 20 years, Takeo’s projects have been showcased in over 300 exhibitions in 35 countries, including the British Library, London; Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid; the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and more.
In 2016, one year after being awarded the VR Lumen Prize for the work A New Jerusalem, Takeo was announced as the first-ever artist-in-residence at British Library Labs, delving into British Library’s online collection of historic urban maps. The result was the commissioned technology-based exhibition ‘I
Still in 2019, Takeo was announced as the first-ever artist-in-residence at The National Archives, UK and culminates his residency this year with the exhibition '[re]Encoding the Archive' at the institutions’ main London venue. The project consists of three commissioned artworks highlighting important challenges such as safeguarding digital records, expanding access to legislation, and conserving documents in a world where the digital and physical are increasingly entwined.
At present, Takeo is a virtual artist-in-residence at the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts & Religion in Washington, DC where he is investigating social and ethical issues surrounding the Covid-19 crisis. He has previously collaborated with the Center’s director Prof Aaron Rosen to realise projects reflecting on subjects including migration in the West and the US southern border crisis.
