JURASSIC PAINT

The world’s paintings deserve to be seen in person.
But if you can’t make it to the lost world,
JURASSIC PAINT can be seen on newscenario.net this summer.
Jurassic Paint is the second online show brought to you by New Scenario. Shot in the
forest of Saurierpark, Kleinwelka, this group show combines two prehistoric yet
resilient species. Where as painting is a creative act of the imagination, the dinosaurs’
appearance emerges from fanciful and narrative processes of the human and
scientific mind. In this show paintings and dinosaurs share the same Lebensraum,
creating a new scenario.
Works on canvas and life size dinos.

Online exhibition at www.newscenario.net

Publishing date: June 11, 2015, 10pm

Participating artists:

Joshua Abelow
Iain Ball
Zoe Barcza
Paul Barsch
Tom Davis
Scott Gelber
Sayre Gomez
Ann Hirsch
Tilman Hornig
Martin Mannig
Jaakko Pallasvuo
Anselm Ruderisch

Written contributions
Johannes Thumfart, Hendrik Niefeld

Concept and curation
Paul Barsch & Tilman Hornig

Credits
Photos: Paul Barsch, Tilman Hornig
Code: Kay Schober, BTSA, www.btsa.de
Dinos: Saurierpark, Kleinwelka, www.saurierpark.de
Sound: Prokofjew´s Peter und der Wolf – JURASSIC PAINT Edit
Special Thanx: Kai Hügel, Martin Mannig, Burkhard Beschow, Anne Fellner, Nelly Pistorius

 

 

dinosaurs

The last time I saw dinosaurs, I was taking my son to the playground in front of KW
in Berlin-Mitte. One of the kids played with dinosaurs in the sandbox. One of the
fathers asked: “Dinosaurs? Is that still a thing?”

I took a look at the plastic monsters that were lying in the sand. They looked the
same way the dinosaurs looked in my childhood. “When weren’t dinosaurs a thing?”,
I wondered and started googling. “Beginning in 1974 Invicta Plastics of Leicestershire,
England produced a line of twenty-three dinosaur toys in conjunction with The
British Museum of Natural History”, I learned.

The first dinosaurs produced were the Blue Whale, Plesiosaurus and Icthyosaurus
and Liopleurodon. All in hard monochrome plastic. They were an unexpected hit.
The Museum ordered more and more dinosaurs. Toy companies soon started
spitting out dinosaurs. Post-baby-boomers born in the Seventies were the first
generation to grow up with dinosaurs.

A strange idea, to give children, of all animals, dinosaurs to play with. Humans and
dinosaurs never roamed the earth at the same time. Yet dinosaurs are factual, they
are no dragons nor minotaurs, they are no chimeras.

Sitting there by the sandbox at KW, I remembered an interesting text that I have read
quite a while ago. Mundus subterraneus from 1664 by the strange Jesuit, Kabbalist,
and Alchemist Athanasius Kircher. Being pretty weird overall, Kircher made up the
theory that all creation happens in the earth’s core and unfolds, grows from the
inside to the surface of the earth. He assumed that fossils weren’t creatures from a
distant past, but yet unfinished creatures about to see the surface of the earth and to
come into existence one day.

We probably give dinosaurs to children, because we assume that their whole
existence is in a state of pre-human becoming. This is what’s so fascinating about
dinosaurs. They spell out the non-human, but also in a way non-animal possibilities
of DNA. They show a reality completely beyond our own, a reality that’s
nevertheless a scientific one. But never forget: all depictions concerning the color, the
behavior or anything else of dinosaurs other than their bones are essentially fiction.

By playing with dinosaurs as kids, we follow the path of evolution that leads us from
fossils to knights to spaceships and finally to adult stuff. When adults other than
paleontologists deal with dinosaurs, they deal with a radical non-human
unconscious that is located at the fringes of pop and science, fact and fiction, truth
and fantasy. There is a dinosaur, an unfinished species, in all of us.

by Johannes Thumfart

 

 

Cambrian Explosion

IBM Watson: Are you familiar with the term Cambrian Explosion?

Hendrik: Ich will Post Production. Frei sein von Zeit und Raum. How do I make
colors pop? How do I remove everything from a photo?

IBM Watson: In der Londoner National Gallery, im Saal mit Florentiner Malerei des
15. Jahrhunderts, befindet sich das Bild mit der Inventar-Nr. NG 915 „Mars und
Venus“ von Botticelli. Auf dem querformatigen Gemälde lagert ein elegant
gekleideter Mann auf einer Wiese. Er stützt sich mit dem linken Arm auf ein
rotseidenes Kissen, die rechte Hand ruht entspannt auf seinem Oberschenkel. Ihm
gegenüber liegt ausgestreckt eine nackte junge Frau in tiefem Schlaf. Ihre Lenden
sind von einem weißen Tuch nur lose bedeckt. Umgeben ist das Paar von
Satyrkindern, die mit den abgelegten Waffen der Frau und einem Muschelhorn
spielen.

Hendrik: Wenn niemand hin schaut, schneide ich mit dem Teppichmesser ein kleines
Stück heraus. Nicht weil ich es hasse, sondern weil ich genauer hin sehen will. Es
geht ganz leicht. Die feine Klinge gleitet wie durch warme Butter.

IBM Watson: With no direct access things can become mythology.

Hendrik: Remember when I was on Dump.fm? Remember how I spend my Linden
Dollars L$? Now domains are doomed. They say it’s chill to hate men.

IBM Watson: Think of a painting that is 56 million years in the making. It could
feature creatures with absolute credibility. Bringing this vision to life would require
an unparalleled level of special effects.

Hendrik: …

IBM Watson: Beton ebnet den Weg für Innovationen.

by Hendrik Niefeld