“Under Construction Series” by Jason Akira Somma at the Park Avenue Armory, New York

Jason Akira Somma employs an unorthodox and novel practice that is situated between the exacting precision of classical renaissance painters, modern technological engineers, and the aleatoric and improvisational methods of today’s most radical avant-garde innovators. Experimental, kinesthetic, and deliberate, his work walks a delicate balance between engineering, technology, medical science, choreography, and the visual arts to fluidly and playfully merge these disciplines into a new and autonomous medium.

Somma’s collaboration with the FLEX dance community of East New York has been the artist’s catalyst for upending preconceived notions of “urban” dance aesthetics. With a shared vision revolving around a new understanding of how technological and digital mediums influence our experiences and surroundings, Somma utilizes idiosyncratic hacking and glitch techniques symbiotically with FLEX in a search for authentic expression and poetic aesthetic-kinetic experimentation through an embracing of both the possibilities and limitations inherent in technology. Photo Elise Gallant