Odo Hans

WHAT ELSE

WHAT ELSE is the continuation and reshaping of my photographic work „The Line and the Dot“ and „Human Surfaces“. In this case „The Line and the Dot“ and „Human Surfaces“ are forming the physical raw material that initiates the artistic design process. The scalpel exposes partial snippets of these individual tissues and textures. Material to create a new face.
A face, or the cutout of a face that reduced to its elements, challenges the viewer to imagine the creature behind it. The human eye is in the focus. Will be rearranged, relocated to human texture and thus removed from its origin. And yet the arrangements tempt to identify with the unknown, in whose world the order seems to be another. Strange, but strangely familiar.

“This is a pretty unique take on photographic collage – so few elements, scrappily captured and combined, to create a new face; the nose and mouth not present, but uncannily, undeniably ‘there’ in the furrows of shaved hair. In an age where appearance is foremost, and where the volume of imagery can be overwhelming, Odo destroys convention and reassembles simple elements to create something both ugly and beautiful, anonymous and characterful. It’s a reductionist approach that is refreshing and engaging, and oddly alive.” – Life Framer

WHAT IF

In the series "WHAT IF?" the order of the existing series „Stops“ is broken. The pictures of the series are dismembered, demolished and remounted. The emerging spaces show a reality whose order of things is close to chaos. As if a whirlwind had swept over the images and rearranged the elements according to their own logic. The translucent paper at the cracks of some images, reinforces the fragmentary character of the work.

GUESS WHAT

A bus stop marks a point in a landscape. A landscape that would give no motive for a landscape image. The removal of the bus stop by ruler and scalpel takes the most significant. Removes the core of the image. Cuts it out. A block of white light is created. A block that compels the viewer to complement. An operation that does not succeed, because the white light wants to be his own phenomenon and the environment does not want to be replenished.

EPIEPI

EPIEPI is the continuation and reshaping of my photographic work EPI, which in turn already represents the continuation of my work “Mit Haut und Haar”. In this case, EPI forms the physical raw material (in the form of a photographic print) that initiates the artistic design process. The preceding work therefore forms the basis for the subsequent work. Here, EPIPEPI is therefore the third generation and hence also a further “evolutionary stage” of a self-generating work. The digital hybrids of the work EPI are layered by means of analogue collage technique, as in an onion. The scalpel exposes partial snippets of these individual tissues and textures. These withdraw themselves further and further from perception’s traditional canon of forms, but at the same time complement one another to become a new repertoire of slightly eerie dermavisions. These layers and surfaces and overall compositions can, in turn, become new raw material for the further artistic creative process. The work’s complexity increases with every stage. It becomes, in the truest sense of the word, multi-layered. The principle of conversion and reshaping can start over.

ACRYL on Paper  50 x 60cm / ACRYL on Paper  70 x 100cm

ACRYL on Paper  50 x 60cm / ACRYL on Paper  70 x 100cm

ACRYL / EDDING on Paper  50 x 60cm

EDDING on Paper  50 x 60cm / EDDING on Paper  70 x 100cm

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EPI

Human integuments are in constant dialogue with their environment, on the one hand; on the other, they delimit themselves from the latter and form a shield against particular mechanical and chemical influences. A principle of protection and sealing that lends the human surface a certain stability of form, among other properties. In skin’s dialogic relationship with the environment, personalized contact surfaces are opened up to its wearer by courtesy of visual or tactile relatedness. Zones of subjective reality that model man. In Hans' digital constructions, partial elements of this skin-stable form are blended with textures from the man- produced world of objects. Hans arranges this clash of forms and textures as a unit, as a dialectic game between subject and object. Within this synthetic game of alternating object references, an aesthetic form unfolds that points functionally to an allegorically interpretable notion of “visual recombination”. The method arrives at congruity at the point where subject and object, as a result of fusion, generate a change in the register of attribution of meaning and generically safeguard the image’s category against appropriation as a result of the generated ambivalence.

1 Euro