"We are living among things we cannot see or even feel: the data may well be invisible, hidden in the cloud, but it shapes our lives and our life chances. Data creates contours and borders, defining the map of who we are and what we do. Those without access to information are left behind. Those with too much struggle to keep pace, bringing work home, checking emails at the dinner table or even while lying in bed with those we love." —James Arvanitakis, ‘Living Among What We Cannot See—A reflection on the work of Morten Lassen’ 

Danish artist Morten Lassen's latest and boldest exhibition in a ten-year association with Australia pushes the boundaries in his relentless search to represent the space between reality and that which we cannot touch—the world of infinite data.

Lassen's large canvases speak of the possibilities of the universe of code, but his code is colour and form: he gives definition to the invisible. The small canvases are significant moments, grabs of information from Facebook or Twitter… . Like nodes in a network, they identify the reciprocity available when asymmetries of scale are proposed in real-time. 

Lassen's work is not only beautiful but it is also important. One of the fundamental purposes of art is to challenge the viewer to see the world differently. Lassen leads us to the edge; we can gaze out at the view: it is a new world landscape, beyond the signs of Pop or the meditative qualities of Abstraction. This is art for and about a new world that touches everyone.

Painted in his studio outside Copenhagen, Denmark, this is an exhibition that makes the qualities of the borderless world tangible and satisfying. 

Ralph Hobbs
2014