Manfred Mohr - Artificiata II

Exhibition: 14th of September – 9th of November 2013
Preview: Friday, 13th of September 2013 | 7 – 9 pm
The artist will be present for the opening.
Concert: John Kameel Farah: Unfolding (Solo Piano + Electronics)
Friday, 20th of September 2013 | 8 pm

With the exhibition Artificiata II DAM Gallery presents the fourth solo show of artist Manfred Mohr. The artworks on display are a sequel to the series Artificiata I that was published as a visual artist's book in 1969 by AGENTZIA in Paris. With Artificiata II, the fifth series of software works, the artist visualizes in real-time highly complex algorithms for computer animation on a monitor screen.
In the early 1960s Mohr, one of the pioneers of Digital Art, was significantly influenced by Pierre Barbaud (1911-1990), who was in the vanguard of computer generated music, and by the information aesthetics of art theorist Max Bense (1910-1990). The discovery that electronic computers can also be used for the production of artistic works was like a revelation to the artist and jazz musician. The computer gives an answer to the question how to transfer the principles of the methodical notation of music to visual art.
In the following 40 years Mohr wrote more than 1000 programs and continued to apply the logics of programming language to the creation of his pictures and objects. In this, the computer served as a means for artistic expression and fulfilled the artist's striving for rationality, precision and for the abstract systematics of artistic production. Ever since, the main focus of his work has been the cube. Event though the works exhibited at DAM are also based on the geometrical structure of a cube, an 11-dimensional hypercube, it can no longer be detected in the works on display. Applying the rules of combinatorics during programming the artist manipulates the cube in a variety of ways. Furthermore, by allowing chance Mohr opens the horizon for formal experiments of hitherto unknown complexity.

Contact: Wolf Lieser [email protected]