# curated by Markus Linnenbrink

Cynthia Alberto, Dave Bopp, Henri Paul Broyard, Otis Hope Carey, Benjamin Cook, Kat Cox, Michael DeFeo, Dick Dougherty, Tal Fitzpatrick, Juan Pablo Garza, Joanne Greenbaum, Carlson Hatton, Daniel Herr, Jen Hitchings, David Huffman, Yasauki Kuroda, Renee Levi, Julius Linnenbrink, Robin Lowe, Songnyeo Lyoo, Irene Mamiye, Tom McFarland, Cyrilla Mozenter, Ryoichi Mizutani, Egan Rice, Daniel Rich, Kimberly Rowe, Nahuel Santiago, Chris Schank, Alberto Simon, Kelli Thompson, Hirosuke Yabe, Maria Magdalena Z’Graggen

December 14, 2018 – February 3, 2019

Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in 2010, and acquired by Facebook in 2012.

We all have our love/hate relationships with social media. I remember being pushed by friends to open a Facebook account early in its days to connect. After a week of inactivity and contemplation, I deleted my account. Back then, one could erase your profile completely without trace, unlike today where your data still lives on in Facebook’s digital underbellies. I’ve never regretted it a bit.

As an artist, Instagram appealed to me as a strictly visual medium; a constant stream of images useful in the art world for easy access to information and a peek into artists’ studios, more immediate than a website, but still with a distance. Even though Instagram gets modeled by Facebook with algorithms and advertisement, I am still participating, although sometimes I’m on the edge of quitting.

I am happy though to have used Instagram as a tool to shape a show that brings together these artists from around the globe. All of the artists in this exhibition were contacted through Instagram, initially invited through DM messaging. I invited equal amounts of female and male artists. The reaction to this first contact had an outcome in the participation and created this particular group of artists. Most artists were excited to participate; some ignored or did not see my request; a few declined or teetered out in the process of arranging a selection of work or shipment. This process is a part of this show, which is deeply personal but is also questioning how choices are made on Instagram.

I am very grateful for the trust and enthusiasm of all participating artists, believing in my idea of a dialogue that initiated in the digital but is coming together in the physical space of a gallery.

-Markus Linnenbrink New York, November 2018

Markus Linnenbrink (b. 1961, Dortmund, Germany) is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY.