HOMOTOPIA: CHRIS
VON STEINER
Selected Works
NOVAS CONTEMPORARY
URBAN CENTRE - Liverpool LIVERPOOL.UK
Dates: 4th NOVEMBER – 29th NOVEMBER
16 NOVEMBER 2009
Written by
NICK STROWBRIDGE
Elfin youths mixing it up with a particularly
troubling humanoid Pikachu in a darkly psychedelic
hyperscape - Novas CUC presents a collection of
prints from three series by French digital artist
Chris Von Steiner.
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Bang Bang You’re Dead [2009]
The earliest series of this show, Lost Boys of
Dreamland Forrest (2007), with a nod to Peter
Pan, not to mention the 1987 Lost Boys, a film
surely bulging with homoerotic undertones, sees
Chris Von Steiner present a innocence led astray and
a dream turned sour, with boys curled up in poses of
despair, bearing symbolic wounds, or even glowering
menacingly.
Installation view Chris Von Steiner
Selected Works [2009]
Yet this sentiment cannot be seen as surrender to
the insinuations of an inherently dangerous gay
culture made by UK tabloids recently – Dreamland
Forest is a place of social and sexual exile. Whilst
unsettling fantasies and desires surface in the
dark, alienation is detrimental to the masochistic
acts presented in these prints. Poignantly then, Von
Steiner’s digitally crafted woodland is a
contemporary hi-res recollection of the exile of
Disney’s Snow White, itself a technological feat of
animation in its time, and demonstrates how Von
Steiner feels free not only to make camp pop
references but to builds them into a sophisticated
statement.
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The Liberation [2008]
A
newer untitled series of digital paintings sees Von
Steiner abandon these dreamscapes in favor of a more
vibrant digital emulation of splatter painting. Over
this energetically abstract background Von Steiner
layers elegant tracings of Disneyfied animals and
images of models whose macho poses are deprecated by
their tattooed pop iconography – the logos of Toys
‘R’ Us, Mattel, My Little Pony, and even hints of
Disney and McDonalds find their way in through more
skilful innuendo.
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Game [2007]
In The Lost Boys of Dreamland Forest and
The Snow King, Von Steiner works around the
flatness of his style of digital painting, creating
landscapes through careful use of layering and
shade. In his latest series however, Von Steiner
embraces this flatness by turning his images into
chaotic melting pot of colour and lines, and of
abstract and figuration - [^]LAND enjoyed the magic
eye effect of spotting two more lost boys caught in
a rather unDisneyfied pose in Bang Bang You’re
Dead (2009) whilst Bambi gazes on approvingly.
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The Loliness [2007]
In this collection it is Von Steiner’s newest
paintings which begin to strive toward some kind
definition of exactly what the Homotopia festival is
about - art which experiments with gender
representation and accepts and playfully indulges in
the camp as a feature of popular queer culture.
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Origin [2007]
www.novasscarman.org/contemporary-urban-centres/ |
