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The Digital Artist : Art, Abstraction and AlgorithmsEach of the artists has the distinction of being a pioneer in the field of computer art |
 P411a © 1986-1996 Manfred Mohr. |
Exhibit at The Williams Gallery8 Chambers Street, Princeton NJ.April 18 - May 16, 1998Wednesday - Saturday, 11:00 AM - 5:00 PM & by appointment. |
 Brush Stuggle VI, © 1997 Roman Verostko. |
A group show featuring the work of artists Charlotte Sommer-Landgraf, Manfred Mohr and Roman Verostko. Each of the artists has the distinction of being a pioneer in the field of computer art as well as being among that small group of digital artists who have developed their own software programs, used in generating their images. Each artist employs unique techniques in the final creation of the work. Included in the exhibit are sculpture, plotter paintings on paper and canvas, ink-jet paintings and serigraphs. The visual impact of these aesthetically and intellectually stimulating works demonstrates how powerful the digital medium can be in the true artist’s hands.
CHARLOTTE SOMMER-LANDGRAF was born in Dresden, Germany where she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts. She has worked as a painter and sculptress, and since 1987 has channeled her artistic energies into digital print-making. Her images, rich in the use of color and shading, have a three dimensional quality that lends an ephemeral sense to her work. The mathematical formulas created for printing Ms. Landgraf’s art were developed in collaboration with her husband, Prof. Dr. Dr. Guenther Landgraf, national science prize winner, and until recently, President of the Technical University of Dresden, Germany. One series of Landgrafs’ themes presents colorful planes with vertical cracks of light causing spatial relationships to appear. Another theme explores variations on rectangular forms circumscribed in surrounding lines of color. Critic Hans-Ulrich Lehmann says: "These sheets in their opulent and profound tones rather resemble the creations of OP ART - their form is based on geometric shapes which in their production and enlargement play with optical laws." Sommer-Landgraf’s work may be found in corporate, museum, and private collections. She has participated in exhibitions in Berlin, Bonn, Helsinki and London, as well as in The United States.
MANFRED MOHR has been described as a "Cubist in the Computer Age". Born in Pforzheim, Germany in 1938, he has gained world-wide recognition for his art and in March of this year is being featured in a one person exhibition at the Albers Museum in Germany. Mohr began his work in abstract expressionism, which he has since developed into algorithmic art. Since 1973 he has been concentrating on fracturing the symmetry of the cube, thereby generating new shapes. He explains that the computer becomes a physical and intellectual extension of himself in the process of creating his paintings. He writes algorithms (rules that calculate and then generate the work) using the computer and plotter as aids to his production of art. Paintings on canvas, wall sculpture, and serigraphs of Mohr’s works will be on display, which, in each case, illustrate the graphic linearity of his black and white compositions . Their beauty and motion, both sensed and visible, are evocative of his experience as a jazz musician and, earlier in his career, as an action painter. Mohr points out "My art is not a mathematical art, but an expression of my artistic experience."
ROMAN VEROSTKO is an artist, art historian, and Professor Emeritus of Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He was trained and worked as an abstract painter, continuing this work during his service as a Benedictine Monk at St. Vincents Archabbey (1959-68), and his residency and visiting professorship in China. During the last 15 years he has expanded his artistic medium to incorporate the use of the computer in the creation of his work. To achieve effects unique to his style, he has composed software programs to drive a pen plotter and in 1994 was recipient of the Golden Plotter First Prize (Gladbeck, Germany). He has published many articles and lectured internationally on the subject of "Art and Algorithm". Verostko’s unique plotter paintings might best be described as aesthetic manifestations of the spiritual, the visual , and the intellectual. Over the years his software has evolved by stages to yield a series of work for each stage . The works currently on display are selected from his Pathway, Gaia, Apocalypse and Ezekiel plotter paintings. A combination of watercolor inks applied using plotter pens and paint brushes and lastly, gold leaf applied by hand, produce the finished work. The quality of an illuminated manuscript is produced with the language of the algorithmic shapes evocative of text. Mr. Verostko has exhibited extensively in the United States , Europe and Asia. His work graces museum, public, and private collections.
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