Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce Making-image, an exhibition of new paintings and video by André Hemer, to be presented from January 6 through February 10, 2018. This will be the artist's second solo exhibition with the gallery. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, January 6th, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm.
André Hemer's ongoing research into contemporary hybrid perception and representation manifests itself in a new body of work created during his 6-month residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn, New York. Digital scans of paint objects made with an open scanner en plein air at sunset on the roof of the studio building are the foundation for this work. This unique image-capturing process creates a lexicon of light, texture, color, atmosphere and location recorded with both LED scan light and the aura of this magic hour.
Back in the studio, Hemer organizes his archive of outdoor efforts, editing the scanned images and eventually printing them on canvas, looping full circle to rematerialize an art artifact that still exists in its original "paint-blob" form. Onto the printed canvases Hemer adds analog layers - brushing acrylics, daubing oils, and spraying paint on digital reproductions and the original paint objects that are now attached to the surface, creating further slippages between image and object.
In Making-image Hemer appropriates matter, deconstructs and reconstructs it, and paints on the composite results. This labyrinthine process allows each painting to become an ontological database in and of itself, a self-referential amalgamation that expresses a fundamental condition of our multidimensional existence. As we project onto and interpret the poetics of this metadata, our own desires convince us to gaze a little longer, a little deeper. We become drawn to and transfixed by digital signs standing in for, and with, the real thing.
André Hemer (born 1981, New Zealand; lives and works in Vienna, Austria) received a PhD in Painting from the University of Sydney, Australia and an MFA from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, which included a research period at the Royal College of Art, London, UK. Recent solo exhibitions include New Representation Part III at Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand; Flatbed Plein Air at Tristian Koenig Gallery, Melbourne, Australia; and New Representation Part II at Bartley and Company Art, Wellington, Australia. Recent group exhibitions include Picturesque at Palmer Art Projects, Sydney Australia; Antipodean Inquiry at Yavuz Gallery, Singapore; Anemic at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK; 100 Painters of Tomorrow at Beers Contemporary, London, UK; and Utopian Days at Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea (2014). Hemer has received support from various foundations and residencies including the Villa Lena Foundation, Italy; Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France; Seoul Museum of Art, Korea; Stiftung Künstlerdorf Schöppingen Residency, Berlin, Germany; New Generation Award from the Arts Foundation of New Zealand. He is currently an Artist-In-Residence at the ISCP in New York, NY as the recipient of the Paramount Winner Wallace Art Awards, New Zealand.