Thorben Eggers at Tatjana Pieters

Artist: Thorben Eggers

Venue: Tatjana Pieters, Ghent, Belgium

Date: May 30 – July 5, 2020

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Tatjana Pieters

We are pleased to premier the work of the young German painter Thorben Eggers (DE, 1988) in the front room of the gallery.

‘All painters and just about everyone should paint from photos’ – Gerhard Richter, 1966

I also use photos as a basis, but where is the difference?

If you want to transcend the nearly 50 year old Credo in a modern era, one should be encouraged to paint desktop or animated images of smartphones today. We are constantly confronted with visual stimulation offerings of all kind that proclaim immense appeal. Therefore, the questions concern me: what is an image in the digital age and how do we perceive reality?

Perceiving and processing the world over surfaces and interfaces is my primary artistic research. Photographic templates often form the starting point for a material tranformation – a painterly return of a digital information to the physical, real world. I’m interested in digital image shifts, which I prepare on the computer and ultimately implement picturesquely. The entire composition is translated on a shaped canvas, so I digitally extend the classic format of an image. In this case I am interested in the relationship between analog and digital surface. When looking at the paintings I would like to refer to our digital viewing habits, because as then manipulations of images are so far only known from advertising or the Internet.

The newly created image objects sway between geometric abstraction due to the new image format and figuration due to the displayed image content. At the same time, painting is my favorite medium because I am convinced that it still offers the most attractive form of simulation. The previously digital perfect, smooth image is provided with analog errors or disturbances due to the act of painting. I would like to mention the issue of such perceptual filters in an inflationary advertising aesthetic and question the digitial image concept.

My art shall translate the traditional viewing habits into a new line of figural language, as well as to pick up societal digital currents and unity them with the help of painting. – Thorben Eggers