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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Origin [2007]               

www.novasscarman.org/contemporary-urban-centres/