Seattle, WA – January 7, 2025 – Seattle artist Brent Watanabe pushes the boundaries of contemporary art by seamlessly blending his background in traditional materials—such as drawing and sculpture—with cutting-edge technologies, including computer programming, robotics, and video game engines. Through this innovative approach, Watanabe creates work that not only challenges the viewer’s perception but also invites reflection on our complex relationship with nature, animals, and technology.

Watanabe’s use of emerging media as a tool for exploring the human condition is evident in his large-scale installations, site-specific projects, online interventions, and video game interventions. With an unwavering commitment to addressing pressing social and environmental issues, his works embody the intersection of technology and human emotion. Whether it’s a robotics-driven installation or a virtual art intervention, Watanabe’s projects invite the audience to confront uncomfortable truths about the world we inhabit and the effect we have on it.

Brent Watanabe: One Tethered Bird

January 17 – February 21, 2025 (opening reception January 24, 4:30 – 7 pm)

The Behnke Family Gallery, Cornish College of the Arts, 1077 Lenora Street. Seattle, WA 98121

Brent Watanabe is an artist combining a background in traditional materials and practices (drawing, sculpture) with emerging technologies (computer programming, electronics), exploring an artistic field still being defined and discovered.

His work explores themes of human consumption and waste, our effect on nature and animals, as well as spirituality, suffering and sentience. Using computers, computer programming, robotics, and video game engines,  he utilizes technology as a medium to explore these themes in algorithmically controlled gallery and site specific installations, online projects, and video game interventions.

The first of his video game interventions, San Andreas Deer Cam (2016), was presented live on the Internet, had over 800,000 visitors in the first three months, and was written about in dozens of publications, including New York Magazine, the BBC, and WIRED.

Brent has had a number of recent screenings, projects, and exhibitions, nationally and internationally, most recently at Bumbershoot Arts and Music Festival (Seattle, WA, 2024), Shanzhong Tian Art Center (closed by local censorship authorities) (Beijing, China, 2024), Digital Art Festival Taipei (Taipei, Taiwan, 2023), OGR Torino (Torino, Italy, 2023), Bureau Europa (Maastricht, Netherlands, 2022), Centro Cultural Banco de Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2022), a VR artist-in-residence with Meta / Facebook (2021), MassArt Art Museum, (Boston, MA, 2020-22), NTT InterCommunication Center, (Tokyo, Japan, 2019), and MAAT Museum, (Lisbon, Portugal, 2019). He is a three-time MacDowell fellow.

About the Behnke Family Gallery:

Sept. 7, 2022 marked the opening of the Behnke Family Gallery at Cornish, as well as the opening of the 2022 Neddy Artist Award Exhibition, now in its 25th year. The Award program (and its exhibition) and the Behnke Family Gallery are funded by the Behnke Foundation and stewarded by Cornish College of the Arts. The 2024/25 academic year of programming includes  exhibitions by Design Faculty Susan Boye, 16 members of the Cornish Art Faculty,  artist Brent Watanabe, and Design alum Victor Meléndez, followed by the 2025 Neddy Award exhibition. 

To request an interview or high resolution images for publication, contact Robert Campbell (Professor of Art; Interim Curator, Behnke Family Gallery): rcampbell@cornish.edu