Foundry Studio: a creative branding and design studio based in London, UK.

bitforms:

200th post!

Manfred Mohr

“Cubic Limit” (1973-74)
digital transfer of 16mm film
4 minutes

Mohr is our featured artist at Art Basel this week in Switzerland. It is also his birthday! Sony recently purchased the rights to make Cubic Limit into a feature film and videogame.

Just Kidding. Below are details on our booth at Basel.

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Art Basel 44

bitforms gallery / Hall 2.0 / Booth G9 
June 13-16, 2013  

Manfred Mohr

Fifty Years - Réflexions sur une esthétique programmée

bitforms gallery is pleased to announce its participation in Art Basel, taking place June 13-16, in Basel, Switzerland. For the art fair’s 44^th edition, the gallery will present a survey of Manfred Mohr’s drawings and sequenced constructions, spanning the years 1963 to 2013. The display features rare, early works in ink on paper, and a selection of later paintings and projects. It also includes Cubic Limit, a recently transferred 16mm film that was created algorithmically in 1973-74, as well as documentation from Mohr’s first solo exhibitions in Europe.

Long recognized as an influential figure of the software art genre, Mohr began working computationally in 1969. The origins of his logical systems are rooted in pure language – even chaotic surrealistic use of language – which can be observed in his drawings and paintings from 1963, created at age 25. In this period, Mohr studied in Germany and at the Écolede Beaux-Arts in Paris. He discovered the theoretical writings of the German philosopher Max Bense in the early 1960s, and later would write in the FORTRAN programming language to create concrete compositions.

 

In May 1971, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris opened Manfred Mohr: Computer Graphics – Une Esthétique Programmée. The solo exhibition has since become known as the first museum display of artworks that were entirely calculated and drawn by a digital (rather than analog) computer. Revolutionary for its time, Mohr’s drawings signaled a new era of image creation, setting in motion a trajectory of modernism and information aesthetics.

Manfred Mohr: Fifty Years - Réflexions sur une Esthétique Programmée reveals, through Mohr’s artwork, a critical period of development in media arts. Marked by the 1971 exhibition in Paris, his work is an important bridge between handmade manipulations and machine-calculated structures in art. Mohr’s demonstrated interest in process, language, and line is revealed in early abstractions, created prior to his use of the computer as a tool for art.

 

Concurrent and upcoming events with Manfred Mohr:

May 12 – Sept 1, 2013. Budapest, Hungary: Sammlung Grauwinkel 1982-2012, Thirty Years of Concrete Art; group exhibition at the Vasarely Museum. Curated by István Haász (The Open Structure Art Society) and Siegfried Grauwinkel.

 

June 8 – Sept 8, 2013. Karlsruhe, Germany: The Algorithm of Manfred Mohr, 1963-now; solo exhibition at the Zentrum für Kunst und Meidientechnologie (ZKM). Curated by Margit Rosen.

 

June 13 – 16, 2013. Basel, Switzerland: Atelier-Editions Fanal at Art Basel 44; group exhibition.