Harm van den Dorpel: The Four Master Tropes

November 16 – 28, 2011

Harm van den Dorpel's two new works evince an Internet-informed mode of appropriation and assemblage, and its possibilities for reconciliation between varying contextual experiences. The first, a video titled The Four Master Tropes, consists of layered compilations of images and text from multiple sources, published together into simultaneous presentational streams. Images gathered from deviantart.com (a social network of artists founded in 2000 and known for its emphasis on formal technique) are overlaid on photographs of the artist's studio, which have been manipulated to convey an ambiguous and "destabilized" relationship with physical space. Van den Dorpel's own voice provides a narration to the film in the form of modified and reordered quotations from a range of books, gathered by highlighting within the artist's Kindle reader. The second work, stillintherunningtowardsbecoming.com, takes its title from Tyra Banks's affirmative catch phrase from reality television show America's Next Top Model. A pure tone plays at a frequency equal to the number of the current year, as the browser displays a pair of highly typical Mark Rothko paintings, the hues of which continuously cycle in endless opposition.

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