MACHINE IMAGINAIRE

Vera Molnar

28 January – 01 April 2023

Opening on Friday, 27 January 2023 from 7 – 9 pm. 

For the first time “Hommage à Molnar”, generative software by Casey Reas.

The famous concept of the “Machine Imaginaire”, meaning the imaginary computer by Vera Molnar from the 1960s, provides access to her entire oeuvre, consisting of drawings, paintings, collages and later also many computer drawings or prints. The basis was always her vision, her concept, which she often developed further in series. In the beginning, she only imagined the computer, but from 1968 onwards it enabled an important expansion of her creative work. Vera Molnar has already gone down in the history of digital art as an important pioneer. However, to reduce her merits to her use of the computer would not do justice to her work of over 70 years. 

Vera Molnar celebrated her 99th birthday in January and we are taking this as an opportunity to provide an insight into her work alongside the plotter drawings that have helped shape her work over the decades. DAM Projects will show examples of various phases of her work, including drawings, collages, mixed media and paintings, as well as computer works from the last 40 years.  

The art historian Zsofi Valyi-Nagy, who extensively researched her life’s work, wrote:

“Familiar viewers will recognize Molnar’s visual language: her geometric forms, her variations on a theme, and her minimalistic lines, which, whether drawn by hand or with a plotter, are unmistakably hers. In her artist’s statement for the 1981 Berlin show, Molnar wrote that she uses geometric shapes not because she finds them more beautiful or “better” than other shapes, but because they resist subjective interpretations. From a practical perspective, they are also easier to describe and manipulate. Indeed, in early vector graphics systems, circles, squares, and lines were the simplest forms one could ‘draw’ with a computer.”