Arno Beck: dig-it-all 

Preview: Friday May 22nd, 2020, 2 – 8 PM.
The artist is present.
Exhibition: 23. May – 04. July 2020.

Extended to July 9th!

The exhibition can be visited anytime after arranging an appointment. Please contact us.

Email: office@dam.org or by telephone 030 28098135.

Our first joint exhibition after the interruption could not be more appropriate thematically. Arno Beck’s post-digital art brings us back to the analog world of art inside the gallery space after weeks and weeks of constant digital input and endless-scrolling. In times of digital information overload and mainly screen-based interaction, Beck takes up a clear position with his work.

Fascinated by the aesthetical worlds of the digital era, which Beck grew up with, he approaches these with manual work. From the digital native’s point of view, he reflects on the early computer games and computer graphics with manual drawings, typewriter drawings, painting and most recently with the pen plotter.

“manual work and digital depiction
interpenetrate and my hand interferes just when the machine claims its field of competence.”
(Arno Beck, 2017)

A composition that could be created within minutes on the computer takes Beck hours and hours of meticulous work. Deceleration, contemplation and a new recognition of time are the result and a main aspect of this persistent work ethic. Also, the observer is forced to pause: The amount of work and accuracy put into each image often only become apparent when being looked at very closely.

The painting Brushtool from the series IRL places the familiar icon for the virtual execution of painting in programs like Photoshop or Paint next to an analogously prepared painting. The layers blend together and challenge our perception.
And then we have these abstracted forms that seem to originate from a computer game but we cannot identify or categorize them – abstracted fragments of a world whose highly pixelated depiction is already left behind us. This new work series was executed with ink on canvas.

Maybe Arno Beck’s work will be even more valued and understood in the context of our experiences during the Corona pandemic.