About
In his new series of works on paper, German artist Jorn Ebner is working towards the dissolution of the figurative image. His starting point is the Death Dwarf, a character from William S Burroughs' Nova Express, who re-emerges in these works as variations of Hans Holbein's Danse Macabre, a series of 41 woodcuts, which Ebner has re-drawn as gestural drawings. Death Dwarf is the main character, the drawings depict him and his environment, both in states of immateriality or digital fiction; music, literature and art are points of departure, reference and subject matter at the same time.
For the series, Death Drum, which draws its title from a Burroughs short story, Ebner used one of Holbein's prints depicting a drum-beating skeleton, as a model for the dissolution of the death figure. The figure merges into an environment of pencil strokes. By way of an antidote to Holbein's grim forebodings are three electronic drawings after a bucolic painting by the Bavarian artist Franz von Stuck (1863-1928), in which the group of dancers gradually dissolves into gestural strokes. Jorn Ebner continues to explore the digital and analogue imaging: The rise of the one seems to call for the death of the other. Yet in Ebner's work, both are equal in the same universe: a paradise.
The Death Dwarf's landscapes have been depicted in a new series of digital landscape prints, constructed in a landscape modelling software. The images have a dark atmosphere, and hover between satellite photography, colour field painting and computer game environment. The supposed hyperreality of computer-generated images is played out against the gestural materiality of the hand-made.
Jorn Ebner is showing his âinternetscapes', dark masses of digitally drawn gestural line drawings, in âDigital Analogy: Pioneers of New Media' at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Bogotá, a survey exhibition of digital art alongside other pioneering artists (4-28 February 2014).
Jorn Ebner was born in Bremerhaven, Germany, in 1966 and lives in Berlin, Germany. He attended Universität Hamburg, Germany (1990-95), Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Italy (1997) and Central St Martins College of Art, London (1995-98). âDeath Dwarf in Paradise' is his second solo exhibition for Vane following âUncertainty underneath immense skies' (2010). Recent solo exhibitions include âMobiles Aktionsfeld' (Mobile Action Area), the Marzahner Promenade, Berlin, â(Landschaften) Digitarialien', Mastul, Berlin (2012), âThe Beatles in Hamburg', public space sound project, Behörde für Kultur und Medien, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum, Hamburg (2011). Recent group exhibitions include âInterferenz', Kunstverein Neukölln, Berlin, âDie Kunst der Intervention II', Galerie im Ratskeller, Berlin, (2013), âSCREENING_2012 - 47 Arbeiten internationaler Künstler', Kino Central, Berlin, âDay In, Day Out', Aid & Abet, Cambridge, âFILE Hypersonica 2012', SESI Gallery, Sà £o Paulo, Brazil, âCollecting Contemporary Art', Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, âOmnia Mea Mecum Porto: Works on Paper', the Kotti-Shop, Berlin, âFILE RIO 2012', Oi Futuro Cultural Center, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2012). He is exhibiting in âDigital Analogy: Pioneers of New Media', Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Bogotá, 4-28 February 2014.