SP-9750 Driver_“submissive bondage” SYNERGETICS INC (2023) & cucurbita maxima production_"d2mac codes” DIXIE DEAN (2023) crystallize Petra Cortright’s ongoing project of turning screen-based image culture into fully material painting. Composed in software through layers of custom digital brushes, masks, and erasures, Cortright creates collages in which soft, floral forms collide with sharp, glitch-like marks. Color drifts and accumulates like a digital weather system, yet the overall composition retains a painterly sensitivity to balance, rhythm, and edge. On the anodized aluminum surface, these gestures
gain a metallic luminosity, catching and reflecting ambient light so that the painting’s mood shifts with the room.
The titles function like compressed code or script for the pieces. “SP-9750”, “Driver”, and “d2mac codes” evoke hardware and software—printer models, GPU specs, the invisible drivers that allow devices to function—reminding us that these images are not just painted, but processed. “SYNERGETICS INC” reads like a fictional corporate entity, a nod to the bland, slightly dystopian language of contemporary tech and office culture. Formatted like file names, the titles remind us of the digital origin of these images, despite their unmistakable physicality as art objects.
Within Cortright’s broader practice, SP-9750 Driver_“submissive bondage” SYNERGETICS INC & cucurbita maxima production_"d2mac codes” DIXIE DEAN both sit in a mature body of work that explores how images are generated, circulated, and fixed in an era of screens and platforms. They hold the contradictions at the core of her project: works that are simultaneously intimate and industrial, sensual and system-driven, made by hand and by machine. They are key examples of how Cortright has pushed “post-internet” concerns into the realm of serious, enduring painting.
