'Rendered Reality' with Felix Von Dallwitz

Through my paintings, I'm trying to break down any boundaries between digital aesthetics and the analogue historical tropes of oil painting. I like challenging the dichotomy, as the digital screens slip onto the canvas and back again. 

Looking back at our group exhibition 'Rendered Reality' we sat down with some of the exhibiting artists to talk about some of the running themes in the exhibition. 

How does digital technology influence your creative process, and at what stage does the transition from digital to physical typically occur?

Digital technology has always informed my practice. It is often the first step in my painting process, whether beginning with a photograph, a digital collage, or more recently, AI and algorithmically generated imagery. Once I've mocked the painting up digitally, I mark it up on a canvas and begin the painting process.

In what ways do you see your work contributing to or challenging the boundaries between traditional painting and digital aesthetics?

Painting, particularly oil painting, is such an analogue process consisting of organic mediums and tools. The process of applying minerals and pigments from the earth to a naturally grown cotton or linen canvas with a brush made from wood and animal hair could not be more of an analogue process. I have always been interested in how this process remains to be not only culturally relevant, but a significantly culturally dominant art form in such a digitally driven and tech based society. Through my paintings, I'm trying to break down any boundaries between digital aesthetics and the analogue historical tropes of oil painting. I like challenging the dichotomy, as the digital screens slip onto the canvas and back again. 

What role do you think digital mediums like CGI, 3D, and AI play in reshaping the boundaries of traditional art? Do you see digital media as an extension of traditional craftsmanship or something entirely different?

 Artist's have always been early adopters of new technologies, exploring their possibilities and utilising them in ways that they were not necessarily initially designed for. Creative applications of technologies is a very useful and unconventional way of exploring new tech and its boundaries, as well as exploring its functions and associated ethics. It is also a mutually beneficial relationship, where new technology creates new aesthetics and becomes another tool to be used in the studio to help realise conceptual frameworks and develop new work. 

 

 

Your work moves between analogue and digital modes—what draws you to explore the tension or harmony between these two realms?

I feel there is a slippery harmony between analogue and digital modes of image making. A jpeg on a screen has the same flatness and aesthetics as a painting on canvas, just as easily as the painting can be digitalised into a jpeg on the screen. I think the relationship between the two is an obvious evolution of painting in the digital age. The tension I like to explore is painting's ability to allow the viewer to slow down and contemplate a single image in such a fast based stimulating world driven by mass digital image consumption. The analogue output of painting, particularly when viewed in a gallery context, encourages a much longer contemplation and experience of an image then what exists online.

 

 

How do you navigate the balance between precision often associated with digital tools and the tactile imperfections of traditional, hand-painted techniques?

 I believe it is paintings hand made quality, both in process and aesthetics, that gives the medium its continued relevance in contemporary culture. There is an innate value to the hand made object, and painting lends itself to a rejection of technology in its process. The tactile imperfections of a painting are to be embraced, and I often find myself getting up close to paintings to see the hand of the artist and mark making. It's also an interesting process transferring AI generated images and textures onto a canvas with paint.