Johannes Lenzgeiger-
Title : to need a home range change
Medium: Acrylic Print of a Digital Collage, 70×90 cm (visual output of a machine learning algorithm and digitally altered photos of an egg-shell sculpture)
Price : EUR 300
National Graphic
1953
Volume CIII
Number One
About the artwork:
When I received my page of the 1950s National Geographic magazine, I was somehow perplexed. The image shows the “Cock-of-the-Rock”, a bird from South Africa, and the text below tells a story about that bird coming to New Your. What could fit better for an exhibition called “Vacation Nation” I thought. That’s the reason I simply kept the picture of this bird and didn’t even try to create some more abstract work out of the context of this magazine page.
I fed the picture of the “Cock-of-the-Rock” and its entertaining name to my machine learning model and altered the outcome with some photos I took for this purpose. I tried to underline that the time we live in changes and forms every one of us. Therefore, I wanted to actualize this old artistic illustration of the “Cock-of-the-Rock” I got sent in a way it fits better into our turbulent times. That’s why I set myself the goal to send this bird down the rabbit hole via some machine learning algorithms and on the craziest trip of its life.
About Johannes:
During my art studies at the University of Applied Sciences Offenbach am Main, I joined the newly founded temporary meandering collective “Blockadia* Tiefsee” that I am still a member of. I took part in a variety of group shows, among others at the art society of Marburg, Freiburg and Frankfurt. After graduating in 2018, my diploma was awarded with the university prize of the Schleicher Foundation.
Since the time working on my Diploma, my art is deeply influenced by the texts of the media theorist and philosopher Bruno Latour. That’s why I always try to communicate, that there is no gap between culture/nature respectively fact/fiction.
My artistic approach is a conceptual one. In the last years, the inspiration for my work have been the phenomena, actors, and the complex interrelated processes of the Anthropocene.
Besides that, I often try to sound out what photography and sculpture can convey and where the boundary between these two art genres runs.