Carla Gannis: The Elevated Line

carla gannis: the elevated line

PRESS RELEASE

Ro2 Art is delighted to present The Elevated Line, a landmark video work by Carla Gannis in advance of her April 2025 solo exhibition at the gallery in Dallas. First shown in 2022 at Ryan Lee Gallery in NYC, This nine-minute looping video, featuring an original score by R. Luke Dubois, offers a cinematic journey along New York City’s High Line, as perceived through the combined human and computer vision of a cyborg character. Throughout this digital promenade, the protagonist encounters a kaleidoscopic array of figures, including avatars from Gannis’s projects spanning from 1998 to the present.

The Elevated Line exemplifies Gannis’s transmedia practice, reflecting her fascination with the overlapping realms of the physical and digital. Her maximalist approach mediates a hyper-stimulated reality, drawing inspiration from networked communication, art and literary history, emerging technologies, and speculative fiction. Gannis likens her artistic outlook to that of a 21st-century flâneuse, traversing both physical and digital spaces to observe and synthesize the essence of our rapidly evolving technological landscape.

In this work, Gannis draws parallels between historical technological shifts and today’s digital revolution. She notes, “The invention of tube paints had a significant impact on 19th-century painters, who could suddenly take their practice outdoors, painting ‘from life.’ Today, a handheld ‘phone’ can capture volumetric impressions of life.” During her daily bouts of volumetric flânerie, Gannis captures 3D Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) scans with her phone, creating a digital landscape of the mind. The raw material for this video was gathered over three strolls along the High Line in the summer of 2022, resulting in fragmented impressions that embody a reality in flux.

The Elevated Line invites viewers to experience a richly layered universe that reflects Gannis’s interior mind. By integrating references to her previous works and infusing the piece with abstract elements, she creates a digital interpretation of the High Line that challenges traditional perceptions of reality. This work not only showcases Gannis’s innovative use of technology but also prompts a dialogue about the interplay between past traditions and contemporary experiences in our digitally saturated culture.

Ro2 Art is honored to showcase The Elevated Line, a testament to Carla Gannis’s visionary exploration of art in the digital age. The video will run simultaneously at Ro2 Art and New Media Contemporary, also in Dallas, as part of an ongoing collaboration between the galleries.

About the Artist

Carla Gannis is an American transmedia artist based in New York and a professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Her art is characterized by a commitment to experimentation. Throughout her career, she has worked with an array of mediums and tools, including drawing, painting, video, interactivity, extended reality, and machine learning. Her multilayered narratives explore identity within an atomized and hyperreal 21st-century context – capturing the spirit of our rapidly shifting visual and technological times through blending historical art influences with contemporary digital semiotics and speculative fiction.

Gannis’s work has been exhibited globally in exhibitions, screenings, and internet projects. Her most recent projects include “Networked Nature” at the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN (2024); “wwwunderkammer” at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Charleston, SC (2023); and “Welcome to the wwwunderkammer” at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (2022). Her work has been featured in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Kunstforum, El PaÍs, ARTNews, The LA Times, among others. She is a Year 7 Alum of NEW INC, in the XR: Bodies in Space track, New York, NY.