Eelco Brand
Field of View
Videos: P.Movi Y.Movi
Preview: Sat., 13th November 2010, 3-5 pm
Exhibition: 17th November 2010 - 15th January 2011
Field of View is the first solo exhibition of Eelco Brand in Cologne. It features three new films - shown for the first time - along with 3D constructed colour prints and handmade pencil drawings.
An abstract molecularly looking object is floating above a hyperreal marsh landscape, a glossy blue amorphous form is lying on a meadow. The oeuvre of Eelco Brand belongs to a pictorial tradition in which landscape and genre scenes play a leading role, but goes beyond the traditional forms of this genre. Realistically looking landscapes are combined with abstract components, absurdity and humour are constantly accompanying the artworks of Eelco Brand. The landscapes seem familiar to us, evoking the impression of having seen them before - stereotypes, completely virtually constructed, but of a strong expressive power. But is not any form of visualisation of landscapes constructed, even those we see in our mind's eye when we imagine a landscape? The artworks of Eelco Brand encourages us to think about our perception of reality. Also the pencil drawings of the artist are irritating since he uses a language of forms that the viewer is immediately associating with basic 3D computer constructions. In Brand's films the viewer is effortlessly changing perspectives: crawling like bugs, moving below and above a water surface. Mushrooms turn into floating jellyfish-like forms. The slow movements as well as the endlessly repeating loop of the short films are nearly meditativeand do not meet in any respect with the expectation that we have of animated films.
The Dutch artist Eelco Brand (b. 1969) studied painting but turned to working exclusively to constructing film and images with 3D. "Painting largely consists of adding and removing elements. You work on an image that evolves through its own logic. For me, constructing a 3-D image is the same as painting. But the fascinating thing about working with 3-D constructions is that you can enter the virtual space behind the two-dimensional surface and, more importantly, you also have the possibility of animating a scene. This means that suddenly you can go beyond the static medium of painting, and can add both movement and sound. This has created completely new ways of constructing and presenting works. The scenes I construct as prints or animations are virtual and hand-made. I don't use photographic materials or scanned images." (Eelco Brand in an interview with Wolf Lieser in Eyemazing, 2007)
Eelco Brand lives and works in Breda, The Netherlands. His work has been shown internationally in Seoul, Moscow as well as in New York and are part of public and private collections all over Europe. Field of View is the second solo show of the artist at Gallery [DAM] Berlin/Cologne.
Think Line
Concept, Computer, Code, Drawing
International Group Exhibition
with
| Hans Dehlinger, D Jean-Pierre Hébert, F/USA Tony Longson, UK |
Manfred Mohr, D Vera Molnar, F Frieder Nake, D |
Roman Verostko, USA Marius Watz, NO Mark Wilson, USA |
click for more images
Exhibition: 4th September - 6th November 2010
Opening: 3rd September, 6–10 pm
7:30 pm Introduction to the exhibition by Wolf Lieser
Specials:
- Extended opening hours for the DC Open weekend: Sat, 4th September, noon-8pm + Sun, 5th September noon-6pm
- Fr, 29th October, 8pm: satelita presents a concert of contemporary music as part of the series „Nachtjournal“
For more information please visit the website www.dam-cologne.de
Think Line is a comprehensive exhibition of a so far mostly neglected aspect of new media art. It is dedicated to drawing,based on a program written by the artist. Think Line encompasses artworks of the last 40 years. Beside internationally renown artists like Manfred Mohr or Vera Molnar, who will be part of an exhibition at MoMA ,New York in autumn on the topic of line, it also presents young positions like Marius Watz. Along with several examples of their work the exhibition includes as well the written concept of the artwork.
Drawing is an art form with long tradition. But in the second half of the 20th century it became possible to create drawings with the help of the computer. This fact expanded the possibilities for an artist and added a new dimension to the concept of drawing. The artist started to write down a concept, transferred it into a programming language, which resulted in an algorithm, and by doing so, he was able to create a drawing with a computer driven pen plotter. The work in series became a basic rule, the introduction of random factors in the program resulted in variations of the original concept. With this kind of work the artist accomplishes a series of artworks in paper in black and white or colour. Continuously and elegantly, the pen plotter draws the line on paper.
The self written code of the artist is not only the actual creative medium but as well the means through which the idea is visualized. The art form units aspects of concept art with new media art. Many young artist see in this own programming a tool for their own artistic expression, they do not want to use commercial software packages with a predefined aesthetics.
Think Line features the broad range of drawings from the beginning in the 60's up to contemporary works where the drawing is no longer executed on paper but burned into aluminium plate with a laser. Tony Longson expanded the drawing into the third dimension by creating objects based on mounted milled plexiglass panels. This exhibition, by including the beginning of computer art, complements the series of exhibitions devoted to Konrad Zuse, the inventor of the computer, who would celebrate his 100th birthday this year.
Nach lautloser Explosion
(After a soundless explosion)
Gerhard Mantz
Opening: 26th June, 3-5 pm
The artist will be present at the opening.
A catalogue with an introductory text of Domenico Quaranta has been published for the exhibition.
Gallery [DAM]Cologne presents a solo exhibition of Gerhard Mantz with new virtual landscapes in Black and White. The exhibition, which was shown at the Gallery Weekend at Gallery [DAM]Berlin before, emphasise compared to the inauguration show E-volve, that was exclusively dedicated to screen based art works, on a different, more painterly aspect of New Media.
In the series, the viewer enters the Earth after a major event. Whether it has been an explosion, that has covered the forests under a perfect thin layer of ashes, or a complete freeze of nature due to cold and frost, is not defined. The places that Gerhard Mantz shows in his virtual landscapes are not real places but landscapes of the soul. The strength of the pieces lies in their alienation and their ambivalence. Due to their brightness, they seem fragile and magic. Since the series is only executed in black and white, the light contributes an important part to the composition. It can be promising but equally be the blinding light of an explosion, a harbinger of a desaster.
Gerhard Mantz adds with his completely computer generated works a very contemporary position to the subject of landscape. Reminding at natural landscape views at first glance, his images refer through elements of alienation such as surface structures or irregularities of software to their creation process beyond real situations. They resemble archetypal landscapes that existed or will exist in far temporal distance, leaving the viewer in ambivalence confronted with the absence of any other living being and with the perspective of a lonely and often even threatened human being on nature.
"...An archetype is a stereotype before slipping into the banality of the commonplace. In other words, it is the beauty of the sky before becoming a desktop wallpaper. It is the end of the world before being translated into the last catastrophic blockbuster. It is a classical Venus before inspiring the last eau de toilette advertisement.
This is, in the end, what probably Gerhard Mantz is doing with his landscapes: turning stereotypes into archetypes, bringing them back to their origin and giving them back their original power..." (Excerpt of the catalogue text from Domenico Quaranta)
Gerhard Mantz (born 1950 in Neu-Ulm, Germany, academic education at the Kunstakademie Karlsruhe) lives and works in Berlin. International exhibitions e.g. Prague Biennial 4; P.S.1 MoMA, New York; Kunsthalle Würth; Micro Museum, Brooklyn; Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg; KMZA Berlin; Württembergischer Kunstverein; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Kunsthalle Rostock; Kunstverein Mannheim; Haus am Waldsee, Berlin; Kunsthalle Darmstadt; Neuer Kunstverein Aschaffenburg.
E-volve
Group exhibition
with
Eelco Brand, NL
boredomresearch, GB
LAb[au], BE
Manfred
Mohr, D
Mark Napier, USA
C.E.B. Reas, USA
Marius Watz, NO
Preview: 24th April 2010, 3 - 8 pm
Exhibition: 24th April - 24th June 2010
The first exhibition in Cologne is dedicated to a major aspect of digital art.
E-volve brings together computer generated artworks of different artists, which are software based and develop continuously or come as an animation created by the artist. The artworks are presented as wall objects, on screens or as projections. The exhibition brings together the conceptual position of Manfred Mohr with his series “Klangfarben” and the minimalism of C. E. B. Reas with the artificial life-forms of the English couple boredomresearch. Eelco Brand presents a new two-channel animation. Marius Watz uses his software in combination with modern music of the Norwegian composer Rishaug to create a tapestry of light.