group Show
OLAF METZEL
Layers and Tracks- the human figure in the digital age
Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam
03.09.2020 – 03.10.2020

Layers & Tracks, an exhibition that examines the influence of the digital on the representation of the human figure and its traces in contemporary art. German curator Philipp Bollmann compiled works by Kathryn Andrews, Hannah Sophie Dunkelberg, Jeff Elrod, Cathrin Hoffmann, Egor Kraft, Olaf Metzel, Manuel Resch & Maximilian Willeit, and Pieter Schoolwerth.

Painting is at the center of the exhibition. Despite its repeated, conceptual death declaration, the medium currently enjoys great relevance and vitality. Thus, the flood of digital images on the internet and especially in the so-called social media can neither diminish nor negate the importance of painting. On the contrary, it seems as if painting feels challenged to react, to demonstrate its strength and to include the aesthetic component of the digital.

The exhibition Layers & Tracks focuses on two different artistic tendencies. On the one hand, works that use the human figure to investigate how innovations and new technologies are changing the way we view people and how we can approach them visually in the twenty-first century. On the other hand, the exhibition presents non-figurative works that attempt to mediate between analog and digital imagery by incorporating a technology-based aesthetic. Both of the artistic approaches presented here testify to the endeavour to create images of our time through painting, clearly linked to its tradition and history, in which the digital is used as naturally as in all our lives.