Manfred Mohr: P-021-Band Structure

Artist(s):

• Manfred Mohr

Title:

P-021-Band Structure

Exhibition:

• SIGGRAPH 1998: Touchware

Creation Year:

1969-1970

Medium:

Ink on paper

Size:

19.5" x 19.5"

Category:

• 2D & Wall-Hung

Keywords:

• abstract
• algorithm
• geometric

Artist Statement:

In my artistic development, I did not have the typical constructivist background. I was an action painter and jazz musician. Through a development of consciousness, I detached myself from spontaneous expressions and turned in the mid 1960s, to a more systematic and, therefore, geometric expression. It was mainly the writings of the German philosopher Max Bense and the French composer Pierre Barbaud that radically changed my thinking, pointing to a rational construction of art.

Since 1973, I have been concentrating on fracturing the symmetry of a cube (including since 1978, n-dimensional hypercubes), using the structure of the cube as a “system” and “alphabet”. The disturbance or disintegration of symmetry is the basic generator of new constructions and relationships. The computer became a physical and intellectual extension in the process of creating my art. I write computer algorithms: rules that calculate and then generate the work, which could not be realized in any other way. It is not necessarily the system or the logic I want to present in my work, but the visual invention that results from it. My artistic goal is reached when a finished work can visually dissociate itself from its logical content and convincingly stand as an independent abstract entity.

Over the past two decades I have had many solo and group shows in galleries and museums worldwide. In 1994, the first comprehensive monograph on my work was published by Waser-Verlag (ISBN 3-908080-39-8) in Zuumlrich.