Jesper Carlsen Procedural

The exhibition invites the viewer on a digital journey into the images and animations. All the works have materiality as their basis and imitates the photographic – the camera should therefore only be seen as a coordinate point that software use as all the works are computer generated. The depicted material therefore does not have any size or detail limitation but are a wealth of equal opportunities. Therefore, nothing is heavy or light, rare or common. In that way, the digital has its own economy, its own material.

“What I want is not to create another illusion, but to create images that depicted the digital logics that lie behind. Approaching these 3D simulations, as were they any other material, and examine its potential and distinctiveness,” explains Jesper Carlsen.

The works can be understood as coded images that create a digital simulation of materiality and material. The materiality of the digital is an electrical charging in celiac. It is therefore small, abstract, and in fact too broad to talk about as traditional material. But what we might talk about are the new images it creates; on the surface it looks like the photography, but in the evolutionary process it moves towards the more traditional mixture of pigment and the construction of spatial objects – a kind of digital scenery of points where the surfaces are stretched as a representation of a traditional material.

The digital takes the form of a shadow-existence as it may look like all other physical materials – or more precisely, it can look like a photo of a material. And at a time where things almost have not happened if there is no picture to document it, the meaning of it cannot be underestimated when it comes to our understanding and perception of reality.

We live in a society where we constantly move between two different realities – a digital and a physical one. Jesper Carlsen wishes with the exhibition Procedural to dive into the digital reality through a materialistic study. The works have their basis in “primitive” geometric forms to emphasize their simplicity. This does not mean that the works are simple; they are emotionally challenging and speak to the hyper-digitalization of the society.

Jesper Carlsen was born in Denmark, 1977, and lives and works in Copenhagen. He graduated from Det Fynske Kunstakademi, Odense in 2006 and has since exhibited several places both home and abroad. Carlsen’s focus is on animation and video, and in his artistic work he concentrates on the human perception and semiotics we navigate after.