Cool clash between past and present

By Amalie Laustsen

The German artist Thorben Eggers is a child of the 90s. Being born prior to the millennium, he had his fair share of floppy disks and VCR tapes, which serve as a nostalgic source of inspiration for his distinctive artistic universe.

With inspiration from photographies and overlooked objects from real life, Thorben Eggers creates hyper realistic paintings of out-dated digital devices. Almost like a pop artist from the sixties, he creates colourful series of large brightly floppy disks, which stand out as a collective reminder of the accelerating technological evolution. Furthermore, the series is a reflection of the artist’s personal nostalgia about a transformed media landscape that brings about a sentimental gap between the analogue and the digital world. By merging the past with the present and reality with painting, Thorben Eggers initiates a dialogue on how we perceive and understand reality.

Thorben Eggers’ practice is characterised by a wide range of expressions and a fascination with the mix of materials. Throughout his body of work, he examines how different and apparently opposite materials and textures interact with each other. His Metal-series, in which he combines a cold surface with a thin white line of canvas, is a clash between surfaces. The result is a minimalistic and cool expression, where he invites us to a gentle touch. One thing connects Thorben Eggers’ manifold expressions: through his pieces of fiction, he aims to make the audience aware of the real world that surrounds us – a world that he keeps exploring in the schism between old and new forms of expressions.

CV
Thorben Eggers (b. 1988)
Lives and works in Vienna, Austria, and Düsseldorf, Germany
Graduated from The Art Academy in Düsseldorf in 2015

Selected exhibitions
2016 Düsseldorf:trifft, Wien Kunstraum Super, Vienna
2015 Reproduktives Entwerfen – lieblingsbieder, Naus no.1, Berlin
2015 Devouring Ghost – Klasse Havekost, Weltkunstzimmer, Düsseldorf
2015 Super Edition #3, Super, Vienna at & selecto Planta Baja, Los Angeles
2015 Full Resolution, Kunstverein Leverkusen schloss morsbroich,leverkusen
2015 Silberrückend, Galerie Felix Ringel, Düsseldorf
2014 Marres Currents #2 – Rumour has it, Marres Cultur House, Maastricht