Language is a double-edged sword that Masumi Nyui wields with conceptual agility and aesthetic flair. The Japanese, New York-based artist creates text-based mixed media work of incredible complexity that draws on the internet lexicon that has become our collective second language. For Nyui, this way of communicating offers both strengths and handicaps, which she portrays in exhaustive illustrations which include imagery from iconic websites and the virtually illegible code systems that give them structure. By changing or distorting these hallmarks of our computerized lives she asks us to reconsider our digitally augmented reality.
The very act of turning pixels and bits of data into handwritten, drawn, painted and cut objects has a fascinating, alchemical effect. Nyui renders these familiar or even unseen fixtures of contemporary life strange and intriguing. She stages moments of technological voyeurism in which we see fixtures of daily activity unprocessed, unfinished, or inside out, rendered with a precise yet comfortingly sensitive human hand.