DISPLAYER

DAVID SCHAFER

MAR 12 - APR 23, 2022

Royale Projects is pleased to present 'David Schafer : Displayer' opening Saturday, March 12, 2022. Displayer addresses the nature of selfhood within the realm of artificial intelligence and real life, and appropriates the form of a commercial point-of-purchase merchandise display rack. The display rack is a form of relational architecture where the dissemination of goods and commodities are released into the social sphere and contribute to the construction of the self within the physical realm. Attached are signs with abstracted logos for social media and consumer platforms and one sign presents two AI generated faces. These faces are fictional, phantoms that identity and politics are projected onto by the viewers. Two lengths of steel chain hang down and loop from the arms of the rack. Here, the human is entwined within an aggregate of data, images, texts, and locations that is folded into the collective, absorbed and correlated for targeting and marketing. Displayer Slit Scan No. 7, 2021, is a digital print on aluminum that presents vertical bands of AI generated faces that are intermixed with slices of abstracted logos. The formatting reference to the slit scan filter used in video and media plays with the idea of an aggregated and parallel self.

David Schafer's interdisciplinary practice includes sculpture, sound, and installation. Schafer is influenced by urban planning, consumer and capitalist systems, and the market forces that shape them. His work reframes found motifs and structures to investigate systems of historical and cultural memory, built space, and language. Recent work addresses data-capitalism and how that augments the formation of identity, selfhood, and the digital uncanny. Schafer is the recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award, Center for Cultural Innovation Grant, USC Visions and Voices Arts Initiative, Los Angeles, CA., and National Endowment for the Arts, New York City, NY. He has exhibited at the Long Beach Museum of Art, CA., The Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD., The Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY. Space Debris, Istanbul, TR, Tent Gallery, Edinburgh, SCT, and De Vleeshal, Middelburg, NL. Temporary public projects include The USC campus, Los Angeles, CA., Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY, and three Public Art Fund of NY commissions. Schafer has performed at Human Resources, L.A.C.E., Los Angeles, CA., Printed Matter, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, NY. Schafer’s Separated United Forms is permanently installed at the Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, CA.