K�an: Eelco Brand’s Painting / Not Painting
Jeff Baysa
The works of Eelco Brand are ultimately
about how we see, about looking and not looking. Cultural theorist Paul Virilio’s
discussion of the “phatic” aspect of signs —- the way they stand
for sheer presence, instead of any object or idea —- applies to Brand’s
art. Instead of rendering, this art is neuro-optically engaging. Derived from
photographs altered on the computer, his first oil and acrylic paintings were
followed by paintings on canvas created by 3-D modelling software, displacing
photo-based sources and presenting paint as data. Retaining a narrative and cinematic
language, these earlier works encourage us to see in a fresh way, driven more
by subconscious response than by rational analysis. The artist’s fuzzy images
obliquely allude to photographic works by Uta Barth and paintings by Gerhard
Richter, in that they reflect a perspective of peripheral rather than central
vision, disintegration over coherence, and memory over direct experience.
In the last several years, Brand has only
made “paintings out of the mind,” forsaking any narrative form, sketches,
or models, painting by building layer upon layer of information on the computer,
creating likenesses of nature strictly from memory. Whereas his earlier paintings
suggested movement and the passage of time with soft focus or blur, Brand now
creates “moving paintings,” 3-D computer animations with seamless loops
of action and sound. Extending the field of painting beyond the confines of the
flatscreen monitor, the image thus framed is intentionally hung in the gallery
as a painting. The animation “VMV.movi” portrays recurring gusts of
wind interrupting the tranquility of a riverside forest. A crescendo of movement
in the trees and water accompanies the building sound of whistling wind and rushing
water, cycling back down to an scene of a gently flowing river lapping the riverbank
lined with still trees.
Brand’s paintings and animations use
the technology and precision of 3-D modeling software to remake nature, almost
pixel by pixel. Ironically, these accomplished computer-generated digital paintings
hearken back to the frozen instant of the photographic image that he earlier
sought to abandon. Through deft and painterly layering of information, Brand
demonstrates that visual data can be easily translated and manipulated. In the
fractals of his recent larger digital works like “SB.digi,” the seductive
smoothness of the treetop-level view above a spruce fir grove is enhanced by
suggestions of fog and a shallow depth of field. One discovers increasing evidence
of the artist’s hand moving from the dense and complex lower two-thirds
of the image, upward towards the top of the tree. Isolated against a vacant white
background, the highest fir branches and needles reveal their flatness, rendered
practically devoid of highlights and shadows. Closer scrutiny reveals that leaf
nodes and internodes appear unresolved. Within these shifted realities, nature
appears even more encrypted and impenetrable, and our visual perception corrupted.
Critic Dave Hickey comments that art and technology oppose and predict one another.
“Art,” he says, “at any particular moment, is always giving us
back what the dominant technology is taking away.” In the works of image
engineer Eelco Brand the giving and taking create an astonishing mix.
