Rather than creating singular images, Cherniak constructs generative systems guided by his instructions, raising the following questions: Where does human art-making end and computerized operations begin? Who is the creator of the artwork? To what extent does the artist control the outcome, and to what extent does he relinquish control to an autonomous system operating within predefined limits? Cherniak’s earlier series produced one computer-generated print at a time. This work, specially created for the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, uses code-based animation – mathematical series generated by an internal logic, which feature dozens of different “scenes.” The result is a succession of images and combinations that will almost never repeat themselves.
Cherniak has a background in mathematics, and began his career as a computer programmer. It is perhaps for this reason that his work involves systemic thinking and a minimalist aesthetic, locating him within a historical geneology that includes the rigid compositions of Piet Mondrian, Sol LeWitt’s Minimalism, and the early computer art created in the 1970s by Vera Molnár, as well as the rule-based biomorphic art of the Surrealists. His oeuvre reflects and resonates with a larger shift in the making of art, which locates meaning not in the final form, but in the logic and potentially infinite variations of the system.
