Facebook data center, Prineville, Oregon 2019

Jarik Jongman made this painting of the Facebook data center in Prineville, Oregon, using oil on canvas. The colour palette is striking: a deep red sky against the geometric forms of the building. It's as if the painting is capturing the building as a process, the way a structure becomes a thing, and a thing can become something else. Up close, you can see Jongman’s hand in the texture of the paint. The sky is smooth, almost airbrushed, while the building has these thick impasto marks. The vertical lines on the left, they're like the ghosts of classical columns, but also something totally new. Then there's the ground, all swirly and gestural. It's as if the landscape is fighting back against the digital behemoth. Jongman's work reminds me of Andreas Gursky’s large-scale photographs of architecture. Both artists capture these spaces of technological progress, but unlike Gursky’s cold remove, Jongman finds a way to make it painterly, and dare I say, human. Ultimately, this painting embraces the messiness of interpretation, reminding us that art is an ongoing conversation, not a definitive statement.