Harm van den Dorpel

Harm van den Dorpel belongs to a young generation of artists interested on a continuous dialogue and exchange with the participatory culture of the Internet. He has shown his work in many venues, including: the Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst, Amsterdam; Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York; Atelierhof Kreuzberg, Berlin; RABK Amsterdam; Artnews Projects, Berlin; Venice Biennale 2009 (Internet Pavillion, curated by Milton Manetas).

Harm van den Dorpel (NL), Animals Series, 2008 (courtesy of Fabio Paris Art Gallery)
Ostriches, 2008, digital print on canvas

Animals is a series of found and hacked digital images, in which the central subject – an animal in its natural habitat –is evoked, deformed, duplicated and transformed into something totally different, simply by using digital filters and tools. A small owl dissolves into an artificial blue sky. A dog becomes a shapeless mass of black fur. An ostrich is transformed into jumble of legs and feathers while helping it to hide its head in the sand. Chance discovery and the serendipity of the web give rise to visual, instead of biological mutation. The result is a bestiary alluding to an unnatural and bio-imaginative environment, so very different from our traditional natural sciences.