Aaron Scheer, So far, so good*

So far, so good* shows current digital works of Aaron Scheer.

digtally hosted at jpg.space

Aaron's work emerges from an ambivalence between the analog and the digital, between materiality and immateriality. It is a natural transition from classic painting with analog materials, to a new painting style with digital materials, to purely digital works. 
In his process, Aaron uses a variety of digital devices and programs to combine elements of collage, photography and painterly technique. The results are hybrid and fluid works that manage to expand the way we see and interpret painting today. This is visible in both his analog and digital works.

The exhibition So far, so good* refers to the exhibition with the same name at OFFICE IMPART presented in May, where the two worlds have been deliberately merged together in an immersive installation.

Within this digital exhibition, we are focusing on a selection of digital works from the series „GIFing“ and the new video work „Screen Painting 1“. 
We are speaking with Aaron about his new pieces, his working method, and about where the difference between analog and digital lies for him…

Aaron Scheer
Screen Painting, 2022
Video loop 00:20 s
60 FPS. 2560  x 1600 px
mp4
1/1

Price: 1 ETH
Availabel on ZORA

In the current exhibition So far, so good* you are showing different works with different contextual backgrounds – what are we going to see?

We are seeing works from two different series: “GIFing” and what I call “Screen Painting”.

In my brand new “GIFing” series, which I have been first showing this year at Office Impart, I wanted to further expand my palette of painterly materials and started to explore with GIFs on Instagram. I wanted to see if I could use such moving low-res images as painterly material. The works were solely created through Instagram’s story function and conceived as loops. Even though they are abstract in its final outcome, they could remind us of flowers, leaves, trees or the ocean. Whereas the GIFs they are being made of have nothing to do with those themes.

“Screen Painting 1” is my first bigger video piece and explores the theme of “recycling” or “upcycling” digital material, i.e. my own work. A theme that I’ve been exploring already in the past. I’ve been taking snippets of discarded, respectively former versions of some of my “DaNA” works and let them run through an online glitch software to create a “painting about a painting”. I then screen recorded the sheer endless variations that the glitch software suggested and animated it to become the piece that you now see. Formally, they are somewhere between Monet’s Water Lilies and a screen saver. 

As an artist who uses digital methods in your practice, how do you start your works?

I’m almost always starting with an empty file, like a white jpg, similar to a white canvas. And then place a first line, or block, or snippet from a screenshot etc. I then construct the pieces, step by step, using all kinds of digital tools with e.g. blurring effects. The machine is present, but my hand still plays a vital part in the creation process. And comes through with its painterly gestures and movements. I also force myself to download the files at certain stages, which leads to the unforgivable act of not being able to apply “command + z” (as those softwares I’m working with are not compatible with each other). It forces me to start every single piece from scratch and helps me to put myself in a state of creative flow: black tea and repetitive music contribute their part as well.

What is the difference between digital and analog in your work method? How do you decide if a work is more suited for a digital or an analog space?

A lot of my works are created purely digital, but manifested physically. Because I want to give them a body, a physical presence and therefore a special kind of aura. Those works are meant to exist irl and the choice of how they’ve been produced is carefully made. But I also recently rediscovered earlier works, where I merged analog techniques (e.g. painting with oil crayon) with digital ones (imperfectly printing out a perfect gray file on a piece of paper) to contrast them with one another. And some works are conceived for a screen surface, like a phone, laptop or TV screen. To exist in their natural habitat, so to speak.

It’s hard to say why I choose a certain medium over the other, but I know, once the work is finished, how it needs to be presented. The works reveal themselves to me, and most of the time the format naturally suggests its medium, like the “GIFing” video loops, which have been made with my phone online and should be shown on a phone screen, not a tablet, laptop or a still being printed out. Same with “Screen Painting 1”, which is also a video loop and meant to exist on a horizontal screen, ideally a 13-inch one. 

How would you describe your signature in digital terms?Is there a term you would use to describe it?

Mh, hard to say. But in terms of my purely digital works “digital imaging” might fit well, as coined by the artist group darktaxa, where I’m a member as well. My signature at this point would probably be to make flaws, mistakes, the ugly and unwanted the center stage of my work to reveal some kind of soul in machines that are designed to be the perfect slaves. By isolating and emphasizing some of the aesthetic effects that are revealed when machines don’t work perfectly anymore. And always giving a little wink to art history itself, at times mocking, at times paying homage to.

Would you say that your work evolves with new technologies or what role does technological equipment play in your work?

Yes, I’m always looking out for new technologies or tools and think about how I could integrate them in my work. Like with my “GIFing” series for example, I’ve been discovering GIFs on Instagram, or with the “Screen Painting 1”, I discovered snorpey.github, an open source online glitching tool. But I’m not a gadget freak, quite the opposite, I like when it’s low-key, easy to access and somehow unexpected. I recently played around with DALL-E (thx to the artist Anna Ridler), an OpenAI tool that could potentially revolutionize the creative industry. So yeah, I’m on the lookout, but also not a fan of using technology solely for the purpose of novelty. I try to focus on the work itself. 

What is a digital space in your opinion?

One where you can navigate and ideally immerse yourself “naturally digital”. By that I mean e.g. exhibitions that are conceptualized as games, websites, apps or architectural constructs that leave the logic of physicality. A digital space should not be a replica of a physical space, and I hope to see more daring digital exhibition formats.