Posts Tagged ‘harm van den dorpel’

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Harm van den Dorpel’s Texture Mapping works are minimal, starkly-outlined cube sculptures whose high-gloss surfaces each depict abstract images reading to the viewer as “painterly.”

The “painterly-ness” of each image, though, is mutated by the de-texturing (or mapping of texture) accompanying one’s view of their subject matter through the glossy “screen” of transparent acrylic which functions as the surface of each cube.

The result is less the experience of viewing a painting first-hand (as in, say, a museum) and more the experience of viewing a painting remotely (as through, say, the screen of a computer).

In the process of describing the experience of textural remoteness, however, van den Dorpel creates a short-circuit to a whole new type of texture:

That of virtual space.

He does so in at least three ways:

(1.) Van den Dorpel’s technique in these works is to paint on the surface of the acrylic which—in the final product—will be viewed as the inside (as opposed to the, more traditional, outside) of the cube sculpture.

One’s view of the painting process is, thus, reversed.

The first layers of paint applied to the surface are the most visible and everything else is masked through, not overpainting, but underpainting.

The virtual presence of this painting’s absence is, thus, activated.

(2.) Similarly, the mobility of the relatively very light cubes and their subsequent malleability into almost instantaneous re-arrangement create a short-circuit away from the physical “presence” of, say, Minimalist cubes and towards the virtual 3D space of, say, Second Life.

(3.) Finally, if one turns on the viewing experience one more time and views these physical objects which reference virtual space in the virtual data cloud of the Web (through a screen), another virtuality emerges:

That of the work as a move in a performance—the artist’s ongoing description of his inhabitation of cloud time.

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Monday, March 1st, 2010

Showreel is a video by Harm van den Dorpel depicting his own “version” or accounting-for of a collaboratively performed potlatch of screen captures shared-in-dialogue between himself as well as a group of artist friends–Charles Broskoski, Constant Dullaart, Martijn Hendriks, Pascual Sisto, and Ola Vasiljeva.

Van den Dorpel’s version of these events consists of an edited (and chronologically preserved) string of images filtered through the automatic effects of an intensified Ken Burns slideshow tool, ultimately resulting in an idiosyncratic, multi-layered representation of the time in which the images were collected and shared in the first place.

Through the continuous application of three automated functions in the slideshow software:

(1.)  A slow dissolve into and out of a palimpsest of three to four (or more) image layers composed entirely of imagery appropriated from digital image archives.

(2.)  A slow lateral movement over the majority of these image layers in both varying directions as well as varying rates of speed.

(3.)  A slow zoom both into as well as out of approximately half of these image layers.

the video (or the extract of the video available on-line anyway) shows its viewer a reel of collaboratively endured time as, on the one hand, ineffable–a continuous flux of image layers merging with memories of image layers merging with emerging image layers—and, on the other hand, because ineffable, un-re(e)(a)l—always already just outside of one’s grasp.

Van den Dorpel’s version shows me the way, beginning with what—to my mind anyway—reads as:

A transparent layer of vertical lines and an orange flame flicker moving to the bottom left corner of the yellow-tinted photo of a quaint bedroom layout.

This image layer collision might strike one as what has been called an “intellectual montage”—image layer A + image layer B=image layer C (the synthesis)—in which, in short, the representation of stability (the vertical lines, the photographic representation of a bedroom) is rendered as unstable (the flame flicker).

But, that’s “in short.”

“In time,” this intellectual montage is, as the flame itself suggests (in an act of short circuiting), already (a thing of the) past—a memory crystal fighting against previous memory crystals, emergent memory crystals, and the ever-present threat of future memory crystals.

As soon as one feels the zap of the intellectual montage, its power—it’s “truth”—is just as quickly zapped out of one’s mind by emergent image layers such as:

(1.)  A computer keyboard inverted 90 degrees.

(2.)  Interconnecting plastic tubes forming a storage unit set against a black void.

(3.)  A plane of refracted light in swimming pool water set against a black void.

(4.)  Two vertical white lines set against a black void intersected by both a white ring as well as a pattern of white lines and arcs resembling the shape of a dish rack.

(5.)  Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Ambassadors anamorphically skewed in perspective in order to mimic the famous anamorphic skewing of the skull in the bottom of the painting’s own original composition.

And so on and so on and so on and so on until one catches on that their own picture of the work is itself ineffable–glimpsed and then buried in the flow of memory crystals and emergent memory crystals in its wake.

Van den Dorpel’s version shows me the way.

References to inverted computing equipment, interlocking structures floating in voids, refracted light on swimming pool ripples, and the skewing of The Ambassadors point to a picture of time and time’s pictures as maya.

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Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Painting (with mouse pad) is a sculpture by Harm van den Dorpel consisting of:

(1.) A framed and matted print of an abstract digital painting leaning against a white art gallery wall.

As well as–

(2.) A vertically-inverted mouse pad resting on the top right edge of the painting’s frame.

Internal to itself, the painting depicts two layered fields of horizontally-composed signage.

They are:

(1a.) A foreground layer employing a painterly watercolor tool in order to create a translucent, dissipating spill of light-blue clouds in the style of, say, Winslow Homer.

(1b.)  A background layer employing a 3D line tool (which notably reads as “digital”) in order to create a bent-up jungle-gym composition of intersecting red and blue lines in the style of, say, Al Held.

This layering of signage, which reads as, on the one hand, “natural,” and, on the other hand, “synthetic,” is mirrored in van den Dorpel’s gesture of framing-as-a-physical-object an image which was both created in a virtual space as well as printed on a digital printer.

Additionally, there is a tension resting on the question of de-skilling:

Is this work—created through the application of automatic effects—made without skill or, perhaps, is van den Dorpel’s manipulation of the tools through mouse and mouse pad, made with a highly nuanced dexterity?

Likewise, the mouse pad resting on the top right corner of the painting’s frame plays with a series of mirrored dialectical collisions.

They are:

(2a.)The image digitally printed on the surface of the mouse pad depicting a notably non-digital painting: a monochromatic rendering of a cliché calligraphic, Chinese landscape painting.

(2b.)The inversion of the mouse pad vertically affording it the affect of a totally different object: a “fixed” or “handscreen” fan which could easily—through convention–depict a similar Chinese landscape painting on its surface.

(2c.)The inversion of the mouse-pad-slash-fan vertically affording it a third object affect: that of an artwork hung on the wall of a white cube art gallery.

Additionally, by titling the work Painting (with mouse pad), a phrase which could be read literally as an object “with” another object (as in the subject matter of a still life), or as an action (as in a representation of the act of painting with a mouse pad), van den Dorpel creates a further dialectical tension between the “natural” and “synthetic” elements of the work.

Is one to view it as a painting and a mouse pad or as a representation of the idea of painting with a mouse pad?

And, finally, is one to view these objects sharing space with the floor (as in sculpture) and the wall (as in painting) as sculptures or as paintings?

If all of this ontological confusion is leaving you tied up in knots, that might be exactly where the work wants you.

Perhaps more than anything else, Painting (with mouse pad), like the work of Guyton\Walker, is a portrait of this confusion–the knots and the slippages between knots (and slippages) that confront anyone interested in the possibilities and pitfalls of making abstract paintings in 2010.

And to go just one step further, perhaps the work shows me the knots and the slippages between knots (and slippages) that confront anyone interested in the possibilites and pitfalls of differentiating between “natural” and “synthetic.”

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