TELL ME THE TRUTH

29 AUGUST – 1 SEPTEMBER 2023 | 6-6 PM CET

ABOUT  TELL ME THE TRUTH
"TELL ME THE TRUTH was created in memory of my older brother, David Acevedo, an excellent artist in his own right. He tragically succumbed to cancer in 1986 at age 35.

The title originally came from the emotional tension of wanting to know the truth about the diagnosis of a terminal illness. But it can also apply to contemporary politics. How democratic societies are successfully sustained with agreements on scientific truths. However, with an acknowledgement that the facts (truth) can and should be updated as humans collectively learn more and evolve."

– Victor Acevedo 

The final version of TELL ME THE TRUTH was created by combining two digitized photographs. One photo is of David Acevedo having a glass of wine, and the other photo is of a few friends sitting around a table in Hollywood, California, in front of Victor Acevedo’s 1981 oil painting called LE GRANDE PETIT DEJEUNER: VISCERAL ANALYTIC.

Dating from Acevedo’s PC Cubicomp and paint system days, TELL ME THE TRUTH includes computer graphic artifacts like "wire-frame debris" and "brush strokes" using the software’s rectangular fill feature. The artist has even kept the accidental data slur (seen at the bottom of the picture) as part of the final composition. This happened when saving the file to a hard drive that was too full to accommodate all the new data. "I suppose you can call it an early example of glitch art," Acevedo says.

TELL ME THE TRUTH had several inspirational inputs. One of which was M.C. Escher's print called STARS. There was something about the classical wood construction of the windowed polyhedra in that image that was delightful for Acevedo. The enclosure in Escher's print is formed by three interpenetrating octahedra, and they function as a polyhedral perch for a pair of seriously playful chameleons. In TELL ME THE TRUTH, a rhombic triacontahedron, designed with reminiscent if not similar edge treatments, encloses and connects the three figures grouped in otherwise fractured proximity given their image origins from two separate photographs. 

Acevedo’s friend, geometer David Koski, helped him build the polyhedron as a 3D CGI model on the modelling and animation system called the Cubicomp which ran on an IBM PC clone. This was sometime in late 1989 or early 1990. Later, the computer model was rendered into and on top of the digitized photographic composition.

The final composition took shape gradually across many iterations. The final central polyhedron was added towards the end of the process. Another important move was to paste David’s image into the right corner of the second photograph. This action at once interrupted the space while simultaneously cohering it with the implicated psychological structure of the piece. The separate domains of the different source photographs are then perceptually bridged by the triacontahedron. 

TELL ME THE TRUTH IN PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
In 2005, a print edition of TELL ME THE TRUTH was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, as part of the Patric Prince Computer Art Collection.

TELL ME THE TRUTH IN PAST EXHIBITIONS
The Computer Art Show, University Art Gallery, New Mexico State University, August 15 – October 20, 1991

Computer Generations: Animations and Mixed Media, Warwick Museum, Warwick Rhode Island, September 8 – October 6, 1991

Artist and Computer, Curated by Scott Canty, West Los Angeles City Hall Gallery, September 16 – November 1, 1991

Computer Influence, Downey Museum of Art, Downey, CA, September 2 – October 17, 1993

Hacking the Timeline 3.0: Digilantism and the LA Digital Art Movement 1985-2005, EZTV/CyberSpace Gallery, 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica, California, April 14 – June 27, 2014

In January 2022, TELL ME THE TRUTH was loaned by the Victoria and Albert Museum to be included in the exhibition called DAS GEHIRN IN KUNST & WISSENSCHAFT at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, from January to June 2022.

ABOUT THE PIONEER GRAILS 
EXPANDED.ART'S PIONEER GRAILS is a series of 72-HOUR OPEN NFT EDITIONS presenting paradigmatic artworks from key figures in the history of digital art.

ABOUT THE 72-HOUR OPEN NFT EDITION
Each open edition is available for 72 hours. The final edition size is determined by the number of primary sales during the 72 hour minting window. After the end of the 72 hours, the NFTs may be collected on the secondary market.

ABOUT THE NFT
Contract address: 0x9c0718c70740B94E9Ad29Cb364A60dd64b7250B7
Blockchain: Ethereum
Token standard: ERC-721
Metadata: Frozen and decentralized