Arno Beck: The Artist is Present (Raised by the Internet) / Falko Alexander at Art Cologne 2023. Cologne (Germany), November 19, 2023.

Official text: Arno Beck’s prints and conceptual paintings evolve around digital aesthetics and focus on analog production of digital images. Engaging with the language of digital culture the motifs are based on low resolution computer graphics, games and interfaces. It is an interplay between the contemporary digital screen world and traditional techniques. Focusing on the analog production of computer generated imagery, he transforms those digital images into the pictorial space, capturing digital aesthetics with painterly means. With his hand he interferes where the machine claims its field of competence — humanizing technology and making it less perfect. Due to the lengthy manufacturing process, the deceleration itself becomes a main aspect in times of constant information overload and hasty screen based interactions. The screen world rejects any kind of physically experienceable surface structure and with increasing digitalization the human desire for haptic grows. Consequently, the transformation of those screen based impressions and the materialization into physical, haptic existence become one of the key aspects in his work.