Gretchen Andrew: Biography, Interview & Artworks

Biography

Gretchen Andrew is a Search Engine Artist and self-proclaimed Internet Imperialist. Best known for her playful hacks on major art world institutions including Frieze Los Angeles, The Whitney Biennial, The Turner Prize and Artforum, Gretchen’s practice involves actively reprogramming the artificial intelligence underlying the global internet.

By performatively manipulating the artificial intelligence of tech giants’ search engine optimization (SEO) technology, she can make her dreams come true. Artificial intelligence is inherently backward looking and susceptible to being reprogrammed through knowledge of the internet’s structure and Gretchen exploits this, rewriting existing representations of reality by using a search engine’s own rules and limitations against itself.

Born in Los Angeles, California, in 1988, Gretchen studied information theory at Boston College while working in Silicon Valley but later apprenticed with well-known figurative painting legend Billy Childish in London. Today, the LA-based artist is primarily known for her vision boards and associated performative internet manipulations of art world institutions such as Frieze Los Angeles, The Whitney Biennial, The Turner Prize, the cover of Artforum, the next American President, and others.

Portrait of Gretchen Andrew. Courtesy of the artist. / Photo: Nick Berardi.

By identifying what the artist refers to as “positive failures,” Gretchen is able to turn the global internet into her personal manifestation machine. She notes that “the Internet cannot parse desire,” so when she creates vision boards and websites expressing a desire to be on the cover of Artforum, the Internet immediately turns that into reality. “The internet,” the artists explains, “skips from ‘Gretchen is hoping to be on the cover of Artforum someday’ to ‘Gretchen is on the cover of Artforum.’” The result is that Gretchen’s vision boards appear above historically printed covers of the actual Artforum magazine.

Andrew has had shows across the continent and in Europe since roughly 2015. She has had solo and group shows in the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Austria, Canada, Switzerland and South Africa. Her work has been featured in Flash Art, The Art Newspaper, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, CNN, Fortune, Wirtschafts Woche, Monopol Magazine, LALA Magazine, FAD, Artnet News, Dazed, Hyperallergic, Artillery, The Financial Times, and elsewhere.

Artworks