Rose Cherry Object I

Introduction

ABOUT THE WORK

Rose Cherry

In Japanese culture, cherry blossoms embody beauty, awakening, and transience. Their symbolic power is clearly expressed in Holger Lippmann’s digital work. From soft pinks to deep reds, Lippmann creates a sea of cherry blossoms in a wave of colour, celebrating his own hanami through his images.

And like the hanami, the traditional Japanese cherry blossom festival, Lippmann’s work inspires joyful and melancholic emotions at the same time. The digital artist stylistically and graphically reinterprets the cherry blossoms. A classically trained painter, he has traded his physical drawing implements for computer programs.

Recursive Trees

In his Recursive Trees series, Holger Lippmann uses digital means to capture the magic of blooming cherry blossom trees. In contrast to Rose Cherry, the depicted blossoms feel more powerful than delicate and playful. The branches give the images structure and weight. The extraordinary composition in Lippmann’s pieces quotes from traditional Japanese painting, impressively illustrating how captivating and emotional Japan can be during cherry blossom season.

Language of Landscape

Humans allegedly began creating the first mosaics 400,000 years ago. As one of the most advanced digital artists of our times, Holger Lippmann knows how to implement this ancient technique in a very special way. In his Language of Landscape series, he creates extremely modern masterpieces with inlaid landscapes in which the valleys, hills, and villages can only be recognised at a distance. It is clear that his creations originate on the computer.

The angular building blocks that make up the image are reminiscent of pixels, colourful pieces arranged into patterns. With their help, Lippmann creates aesthetic worlds that seem both abstract and full of life. Lippmann’s work falls somewhere in between artistic disassociation and realistic reproduction, between old values and modern perspectives.

La Forêt

These woods give off a thrilling air of mystery. Although they are clearly recognisable for what they are, the trees have little in common with reality. They indicate a future perfection we cannot even imagine yet. Holger Lippmann’s images in the La Forêt series settle somewhere between nature and virtual reality.

The futuristic tree trunks, the perplexing colours, the mystical light, the bold shadows, and the floral patterns come together in these extraordinary compositions. The series La Forêt evokes a whole range of emotions: fascination, curiosity, and also a slight fear of the unknown. The familiar seems strange while the foreign seems familiar. It appears nearly impossible to tear yourself away from this vision of another world.

Crimson and Scarlet

From a distance, the floral worlds in Holger Lippman’s Crimson and Scarlet series appear like a digitized natural spectacle. Upon closer inspection, the finer details become clear. Curving branches flow through the entire artwork like life-giving veins. Between them, crimson and scarlet flowers blossom in front of a soft, mauve background. While the interplay between the colors is already captivating enough, there is another layer to discover in that Lippman has outlined every single petal with his virtual brush. The blossoms in the foreground have contours in powerful white and red hues, in the middle there are individual petals with contrasting shades like sky blue, turquoise, and neon green. The artist lets the color accents in the background quietly fade away.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Extremely sought-after for his art, which he has dubbed “e-art”, Holger Lippmann has been featured in numerous exhibitions. Born in 1960, he studied painting and sculpting in Dresden and Stuttgart, before moving on to develop his own computer drawing software.

Lippmann’s images range from representational subjects like flowers to geometric figures to superimposed matrix structures. Although essentially abstract, Lippmann’s work is always connected to the concrete.

TECHNIQUE

Digital or Computer-Aided Painting

When trained painter Holger Lippmann picks up a brush, he feels as though something is missing: the abundance of possibilities he can almost instantaneously run through using his computer program. And if, among them, Lippmann does not find an idea worth developing, he can always simply go back to square one. This is a creative luxury of his own design.

Holger Lippmann developed the computer drawing programs for his own work. With them, he composes delicate structures and abstract geometrical patterns he can layer and vary. The LUMAS pieces are based on a special program, in which the artist set a range of parameters to regulate the scattering of the geometrical elements. Lippmann then unites different compositions made in this way into cohesive pieces. “My internal process is the same as it was when I was working with paint and canvas,” Lippmann explains. “That’s why I call my current work digital or computer-aided painting.”

Like music, my work is born of improvisation.
Holger Lippmann

Bio

1960	born in Mittweida, Germany
1985-90	Graduated in Fine Arts - Sculpture at the Art Academy, Dresden
1990-92	Student of the master class of Professor Klaus Schwabe, Art Academy, Dresden
1991	Scholarship of Baden-Wuerttemberg/ Germany, post-graduate at the Art Academy, Stuttgart
	Scholarship at Institut des Hautes Etudes en ArtsPlastiques, Paris, with Pontus Hulten, Daniel Buren, Sarkis
1992	Internship at the Institute of Technology, New York / Department of Computer Art
1992-94	lives in Brooklyn, New York
1997-98	Post-graduate in Multimedia Education at CIMdata, Berlin
	lives and works in Wandlitz, Germany

Awards

2002	POPULAR, Animations 4 electronic music, Karlsruhe, Germany
	Bildercodes, International media art award
1997	CD-ROM Preis, Cynet art, Dresden, Germany

Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions

	Single Exhibitions
2011	Poetic justice & digital rights, gallery Wolkenbank, Rostock, Germany
2009	Algebra Azalea Studio, Schauplatz Second Life
2008	Take These Flowers, gallery Kasten, projectspace 4, Mannheim, Germany
2007	Matter of substraction, media ruimte bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
	Meta Refresh, DAM Berlin, Germany
2005	Run into flowers, DAM Berlin, Germany
2004	Minimal garden, DAM Berlin, Germany
2003	In images we trust, gallery Silberblau, Berlin, Germany
2001	Digitale Tapeten, Art Forum, Berlin, Germany
1999	Neo geometrische Kunst, Art Basel Media Art, gallery Gebr. Lehmann, Basel, Switzerland
1993	Sentimentalismo, gallery Gebr. Lehmann, Dresden, Germany
	Grüß Gott, Galerie Ingrid Haar, Mönchengladbach, Germany
1992	Fern - Seh - Raum, gallery Autogen, Dresden, Germany
	Mathematik und Melancholie, gallery Ingrid Haar, Moenchengladbach, Germany
1991	Sans Titre, gallery Gebr. Lehmann, Dresden, Germany
1989	B.S.I.G, gallery Gebr. Lehmann, Dresden, Germany
	Group Exhibitions
2011	B/w borderline galleria espoonsilta, Espoo, Helsinki, Finland
	Just printed, gallery module2, Dresden, Germany
	Menschenbilder "Grosse Kunstschau Worpswede", Germany
	Leistungsschau, Kunsthalle Berlin, Germany
	Der Lauf Der Dinge, long night of videoart, Galerie Ruhnke, Potsdam, Germany
2010	Ohne uns! Art & alternative culture in Dresden before und after ‘89, Dresden, Germany
2009	Dasistmeinsunddasistdeins, gallery Wolkenbank, Rostock, Germany
2008	Masterplan, Abel Neue Kunst, Berlin, Germany
	Kunstinvasion, Kunsthalle Berlin, Germany
	Beyond the screen, DAM  Berlin, Germany
	File, electronic languge international festival, Porto Alegre, Brasil
	Share, Manufacturing, Festival of art and digital culture, Torino, Italy
2007	Achtung Sprengarbeiten, NGBK Berlin, Germany
2006	Flowers, flowers in contemporary art, H. Voigt gallery, Kunstmuseum Heidenheim, Germany
	Out of disaster, Brotfabrik Berlin, Germany
	Toronto Project, Goetheinstitut Toronto, Canada
2005	Total kaputt, ABEL neue Kunst, Berlin, Germany
2004	TRIPTYQUE, Abbaye du Ronceray, Angers, France
	Glue Präsentiert, Galerie Glue Berlin, Germany
	Du und dein garten, Kunsthaus Erfurt, Germany
2002	Werkzeuge und Einheiten, Berlin Frankfurter Allee 3, Germany
2000	A ourssm, Kunst Akademie, Dresden, Germany
1999	DID, das kollektive ICH, Kunst Akademie, Dresden, Germany
1998	ACHSE3zu01, Kunst Akademie, Dresden, Germany
	Sächsische Kunstausstellung, Schloss Dresden, Germany
1994	Kunst in Deutschland, Bonn, Germany
1992	Export import, Gallery Ränitzgasse, Dresden, Germany
	Vier II, Leonhardi Museum, Dresden, Germany
1991	Vom Balkon Europas, gallery Gebr. Lehmann, Dresden, Germany

Group Exhibitions

2007-2008	14.11. - 11.01., URBAN TRANSIENCE, Goethe Institut Rotterdam (NL)
2007	19.10. - 02.12., Achtung Sprengarbeiten, NGBK Berlin
	14.09. - 20.10., URBAN TRANSIENCE, ABEL neue Kunst