ART-PRESENTATION: Tim Berresheim-Aus Alter Wurzel Neue Kraft

Tim Berresheim calls himself a “maker of images” and combines traditional media like photography, painting and collage with digital technology in order to explore, critique and illustrate the contemporary relationship between art and technology. His work expands upon previous limitations of traditional media to coerce two-dimensional planes into what the artist describes as “visual sculptures”.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Meliksetian | Briggs Archive

Tim Berresheim in his new solo exhibition “Aus alter Wurzel neue Kraft” presents 2-dimetional works that follow an arc of German image making using technological sources from his mentor Albert Oehlen’s Computer Paintings of the ‘90s to Sigmar Polke’s Machine Paintings of the early ‘00s, while defining his own aesthetic and breaking new ground in his use of sophisticated, state of the art CGI and DGI technologies. The title of the exhibition, which translates to “New Strength from an Old Root”, can be read as a programmatic affirmation of the present for Berresheim’s entire work. The “old root” referenced by the works is not only the panel picture that is still the most prominent presentational format in the field of fine art, but also the computer, which for the past 50 years has been available as a tool to generate images. According to Berresheim, it is still primarily being used in the sense of a “doubling of the world” or simulating the world as standardized by one-point perspective, and thus not used to the full extent of its potential. The “root” is symbolized by a lemon with male attributes, still fragrant but, as can be seen on the exhibition poster, simultaneously dependent on a walking aid and notepad. The concentrated, largely abstract printed works in the exhibition further develop the already complex representations from the previous groups of works to the extent that the objects, which are identifiable here for the first time, are incorporated into the dense formations of fixed cone-shaped and linear traces as well as gaseous volumes. Differently characterized motion blurs are now woven together, not only resulting in the forgoing of an exclusive point of view and hence a de facto expansion of one-point perspective but the images simultaneously also rep-resent the attempt to respond to the challenges of a present marked by an overwhelming and eminently complex concentration of data and an incessant flow of information by means of a traditional form of aesthetic production, the panel picture.

Info: Meliksetian|Briggs Gallery, 313 N Fairfax Avenue, West Hollywood, Los Angeles, Duration: 2/8-15/10/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 12:00-17:00, www.meliksetianbriggs.com