Allison Tanenhaus (she/her) is a New York–born, Boston–based digital glitch artist. She specializes in bold geometrics, kaleidoscopic color fields, trippy op art, thought-provoking truisms, anachronistic tech mashups, and unexpected dimensional qualities. Her primary formats include retrofuturistic GIFs, loops, and music videos; abstract public art; street art cat stickers; and large-scale video projections.
Source material consists of Allison’s original images, collected artifacts, and crowdsourced clips that she alters via smartphone. Made with equal parts deliberation and experimentation, the results are rainbow-hued compositions that take on a psychedelic life of their own. At a time when platforms pervasively cull personal data, she views creatively reclaiming files and devices as a radical act of autonomy, mindfulness, and personal ownership. Also looks way cool.
Allison’s work has been showcased in 16 countries via galleries, public art, media festivals, and guerrilla street art postings. Notable commissions and exhibitions include the ICA Store at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, SaveArtSpace, “GlitchKraft: Allison Tanenhaus + Friends,” and “Empowered Women Empower Women,” curated by Paris Hilton.
Allison is a grantee of the 2019 Somerville Visual Art Fellowship and the 2021 City of Boston Transformative Public Art Program. She is a member of electronic music group The Square Root of Negative Two and optical installation duo bent/haus.
Allison’s video work is featured in the Carole Calo gallery. You can check out her work below.
Spectralia (Set 1 Left)
Distortions II
Glitchfield