Ludwig Hanisch, is a contemporary artist born 1984, from Halle an der Saale.
Hanisch studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg in the master class of Prof. Thomas Hartmann.
The artist lives and works in Germany.
By combining contemporary painting with computer game culture, I transform the concept of playing in a visual artistic attitude.
The starting point of this connection are memes and screenshots from iconic computer games, whose background graphics serve as a stage for me.
In these levels my painting and the protagonists find space and time to act.
The motifs paying homage to the heroes of old cartoons and computer games.
These always seemed lost and lonely to me in their own world.
The preliminary drawings and drafts are created digitally.
They first appear on the screen as a virtual image and then through the translation into painting, including brushstrokes and texture, in contrast to the limitless copying of the digital, they become unrepeatable unique materialized.
In this intermediate world - the tangible image world in the form of painting, mixed with the virtual unattainable reality of games, I examine the interface between analog and digital pictures and question their veracity.
WARP ZONE:
Correspondingly, Warp Zone stands for teleporter or portal. I interpret this term as a kind wormhole, as believed to exist in space.
The hub of my warp zone is the »Black Hole«. In this work, which is currently in the solo exhibition 'WARP ZONE' at the Kunstverein Kohlenhof Nürnberg e.V. (05/29/21 - 06/26/21), I translated the backboard of a basketball hoop into canvas painting I built a stretcher frame and attached a real basketball basket to it.
Painting, sculpture and installation come together in an exciting combination, because at the same time becomes conjured up an imaginary playing field around the basketball hoop.
The scraped off »Space Invaders« pattern on the canvas / target board ask questions about unknown beings and possible existences in space.
Far away, near the event horizon, the sculpture 'Black Knight' hovers.
Inspired by the computer game 'Golden Ax', it seems threatening at first -the wings stretched wide, the sword firmly in hand, ready to fight.
However, it is a homage to the 'Black Knight satellite conspiracy theory' a far more harmless contemporary - a supposedly extraterrestrial satellite which should be in our atmosphere.
A big thank you to Ludwig for talking about and sharing his work with us!
# gamified painting # computer graphics # computer game culture