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Klasse Schirin Kretschmann  |  Raum A.O1.12, Altbau  |  https://rutene.net/

 

My way of seeing is influenced by the time during which the internet and digital technologies came to be. I wanted to explore this aesthetically and started reflecting elements of computer graphics or digital photographic imagery through such formal techniques as hard edges made with masking tape or blurring and neutralising the brushwork. Nethertheless a lot of what I’m doing is also intuitive. As for the subject matter, I try to portray people belonging to my generation, millennials, the first global generation that grew up in the Internet age. I think it might be associated with what I see as digital and networked loneliness - this feeling of being hyper connected but also isolated and alienated at the same time. Furthermore, most of the subjects I choose to paint - the youth, millennials, gadgetry, crafted foods, artificial flowers etc - have this common quality of being unnatural, artificial, constructed. It’s easy to fetishise painting: it has all of the pigments, binders, brushes, the histories, the legends - one more motivation for what I try to do is the demystification of painting and art while also not losing a sense of excitement it sometimes can produce.