Josh Kline

In his installations, videos, sculptures, and photographs, Josh Kline explores how new technologies are transforming human life in the 21st century. In doing so, he deliberately draws on the technologies, practices, and forms with which he himself works, examining digitization, image processing, 3D printing, commercial and political advertising, and productivity-enhancing substances — all of which he simultaneously turns against these very same forces. He focuses on aspects of labor and class and explores how pressing contemporary social and political issues — such as automation, climate change, and the erosion of democracy — affect the people who make up the workforce.

In an earlier series of sculptures titled Creative Hands (2011), Kline created portraits of creative workers who market and traffic themselves as brands via social media. He cast their hands in skin-colored silicone holding objects that are indispensable for creative work and its associated lifestyle in New York. In 2024, he revisited these earlier works, making a new group of self-portraits in which his hands hold objects that have appeared in his own art or tools used in his work — such as iPhones, juice bottles, hand sanitizer, computer accessories like Mac mice, mouthwash (Listerine), water (Poland Spring), donuts, wrist wraps, pain relievers (such as Advil), or the Magic 8 Ball toy oracle.

Even though the artist uses his own hands as the starting point for the cast, the three cast — presented with only minimal variations — evoke a sterile, impersonal impression. Here, the body is portrayed as interchangeable in the context of increasing automation and the technological permeation of work. There is a shift from the individual subject toward a functional component of a system that organizes behavior, perception, and existence.

The clear boundaries between human and machine begin to dissolve, as does the notion of a stable, objective reality. Rather, this reality appears as the result of technical and media processes in which perception, behavior, and identity are increasingly generated and regulated by digital and algorithmic systems.

Whatever It Takes 2024, 2024
Pigmented silicone, metal shelf with tinted polyurethane paint, LED lighting
Top shelf: Artist’s hand with a Magic 8 Ball; middle shelf: Artist’s hand with a wrist brace; bottom shelf: Artist’s hand with a Mac mouse
94 × 66 × 33,7 cm
Courtesy Josh Kline and Lisson Gallery, London / New York