Manfred Mohr
Artist Statement:
After having been an established abstract artist for many years, I started in 1969 working exclusively with a computer, therefore creating art with the logic of algorithms. Through this radical approach, which I consider an important part of my contribution to systematic art, I learned an astonishing new way of thinking about my work. The computer became a physical an intellectual extension in my creative process. My research centers on the logical content of an idea and the search for general rules describing this idea. I write procedures generating visual results that are the logical consequences of these complex and multilayered rules. It is, however, not the system or logic I want to present in my work but the visual invention which results from it. My artistic goal is reached when the finished work can visually dissociate itself from its logical content and convincingly stand as an independent abstract entity
Artist Biography
Manfred Mohr was born in Pforzheim, Germany in 1938. He attended art school in Pforzheim and Paris. He has lived in Barcelona and Paris. He played Oboe and in classical ochesters and later as tenor saxophonist in several modern Jazz groups in Germany and Paris. He toured in Spain with a french Rockgroup and recorded several albums. In 1983 he moved to New York. He is considered a pioneer of digital art, programming his first computer drawings in 1969. In 1971, he had the world’s first one-person show of digital art in a museum at ARC Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Other solo shows in museums include: Joseph Albers Museum, Bottrop; Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen; Museum for Concrete Art, Ingolstadt; Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen; Museum im Kulturspeicher, Würzburg; ZKM – Media Museum, Karlsruhe; Simons Center, Stony Brook; and Kunstmuseum, Pforzheim. Group shows include: MoMA, Whitney Museum, LACMA, TATE Modern, Jeu de Paume, Centre Pompidou, SFMoMA, and MACM. He received the Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art, ACM Siggraph, Anaheim; [d.velop] digital art award, Berlin, Germany; Artists’ Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts; Golden Nica (Computer Graphics), Prix Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria; and Camille Graeser Prize, Zürich, Switzerland.
AAA:
Member Since: 1996
