Picturing Technology: Land and Machine August 10, 2011

Commonly thought to be a positive force, technical innovations--from the Industrial Revolution to the Digital Age--operate as a hallmark of society. And, yet, throughout the ages, there have been reactions against technology: movements against the advances of science and innovation and in search of purer, more natural lifestyles. 'Picturing Technology' explores society's conflicted responses to technical innovation as evidenced in works from the permanent collection of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Photographs, paintings, prints, and installations by Tom Arendt, Warrington Colescott, Jim Dine, Vernon Fisher, Archie Lieberman, O. Winston Link, Claes Oldenburg, and Alyson Shotz among others, show objects such as airplanes, guns, ships, and trains in urban and rural contexts. Works in the exhibition also utilize and address recent transformations like computers and digital photography that have allowed information and the storage of information to mushroom.