In the 1950's art critic Harold Rosenberg described the archetypal "action painter" as an artist who transformed his canvas into a modern-day arena, wherein an epic struggle between man and material might unfold. What Hemer has created in The Digital Atelier may be more closely described as being a goofy play-fight, between the artist and his mundane and conventional painting tools...silly huh? www.andrehemer.com
The Digital Atelier
new painting work by André Hemer
The Digital Atelier is a work that confronts the digital interface as used within contemporary painting practice. The painting process described in The Digital Atelier sets up a parody to the modernist painting process. It denies the genius attached to the modernist process and refutes the notion of individualism or uniqueness in an artist's process. In The Digital Atelier, Hemer’s process is laid bare.
The digital facade provides an easy entry point to the viewer- projecting a contemporary piece of pixelated eye-candy over a bare-white canvas. The facade itself is unusable as an atelier, or working studio. Instead it acts as a still studio shot- a moment of the painting process caught in time. The physical interface that usually accompanies the visual interface has been removed. Unlike a photograph this is a scene that can be stepped into. It is a physical 'still'. In The Digital Atelier, the painting process seems to have been interrupted.
The modernist painting process attempted to 'heroically' exemplify the grandeur of the 'action painting' process. The Digital Atelier confronts this notion, and reveals Hemer's painting process in a similar context. The Modernist painters' transformed the atelier into a painting event, in which a tussle between an artist and their materials might occur. In such terms, the painting process becomes more important than the 'finished' painting object.
What becomes apparent in The Digital Atelier is how the revealing of process has served to illuminate the ordinary. The Digital Atelier firmly exposes the banality and control of Hemer's process. In accepting this banality, any notions of artistic 'greatness' within the painting process (or act) are denied.
The Digital Atelier also reveals the painting object (hung conventionally in a gallery context), in the second gallery space. Aside from the visual recognition of the vector-based composition, the painting object keeps its digital process hidden from the viewer. Instead, it makes sure to explicitly expose itself as a painting object i.e. paint on canvas over stretcher.
Its relevance as a painting created with some digital process is minimal, and it does not seek to obtain affirmation by its 'secondary' (digital) process. As with all of Hemer's painting, the work seeks a legitimate way of responding to the history of modernist painting. The paintings use a conventional painting mode, but do so with elements of humour and irreverence, contrasting against the all too serious nature of modernist painting.
Using 'disposable' computer technologies, Hemer to parodies the human genius portrayed in the modernist process. The infidelity inherent in the computer software is intentionally revealed to the viewer via the exposed vectors. Hemer's paintings deliberately articulate the visual paradox of working with the 'freehand' drawing of a computer mouse.
In the 1950's art critic Harold Rosenberg described the archetypal "action painter" as an artist who transformed his canvas into a modern-day arena, wherein an epic struggle between man and material might unfold. What Hemer has created in The Digital Atelier may be more closely described as being a goofy play-fight, between the artist and his mundane and conventional painting tools...silly huh?
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