IVONNE THEIN
Ivonne Thein is a multidisciplinary artist, based in Berlin, whose photographs, videos, sculptures and mixed media installations have been shown in galleries and museums such as Fotomuseum Winterthur, CO Berlin, ACP Sydney, Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Lentos Linz and Amelie A. Wallace Gallery NY. She has received prizes and grants from CO Berlin, ifa, Stiftung Kunstfonds, VG Bildkunst and BBK Bundesverband.
In her artistic practice, Thein focuses on our social and political perception of the human body in terms of gender, posthumanism and the traditional notion of our body image in the digital age. In her work she often refers to the increasing tendency to code the body as a mass that can be manipulated at will. We can do something with our body, shape it or manipulate it.
Ivonne Thein in her wearable art
see the bomber jacket here >>
untitled, 2021 (excerpt, full video on request)
work in progress of my current project in cooperation with an AI
For her current work, she is collaborating with an AI (Artificial Intelligence) to create images of the human body. She later on transforms these digital works back into physical space as mixed media installations. The installations contain silicone sculptures based on the images generated with the AI, as well as videos and large-format prints. In her multidisciplinary work, Thein questions our traditional conception of the human body. Her work thus points to the limits of the visual reinterpretation of the human body within the context of digital image techniques and technologies.
human, 2021
mixed media installation
PVC, aluminium, LED - lights, steel, glas, silicone, pigments
image synthesis, solvent print on fabric, 100 x 100 cm
embodied, 2021
4K video loop, 2:18 min
In the work embodied I address the change of our contemporary body image in the digital age. The series of works consisting of 10 image syntheses was created in a process-based collaboration with an artificial intelligence. I first trained the AI with my own image material in order to then generate new images based on this knowledge. For this purpose, I provided her with an inspiration for structure and color as well as a sketch for the shape for each picture. The resulting body images are fragmentary hints that give an idea of individual body shapes. The work thus points to the limits of the visual reinterpretation of the human body by means of digital technologies and in the context of digital image techniques.
how not to be seen as a body I, 2020 (video excerpt)
mixed media installation
five computer generated photographs (50 x 50 cm), photo print on fabric with silicone, carpet with photoprint, 4K video loop with sound, 5:12 min
see the full video in the online exhibition PARADOXIAL OBJECTS curated by Sue Bachmeier and Peggy Schoenegge for PEER TO SPACE
how not to be seen as a body II, 2020 - 2021
wall sculptures
silicone, pigments, artificial hair, plexiglas
165 x 50 x 10 cm & 30 x 30 x 10 cm
In our performance-oriented society, there is a growing tendency towards objectification, which encodes the body as an arbitrarily manipulable mass. We can do something with our body, shape it or manipulate it. Today it seems omnipresent, permeable and somehow surmountable, and increasingly resembles a set of possibilities. How not to be seen as a body is a mixed media installation in which the artist no longer understands the body as a whole but rather fragmented or manipulated. She deconstructs the body and thus raises the question of the change of our contemporary body image in the digital age. The work consists of photographs which are printed on different materials (carpet, fabric), computer-generated photos and a video.
exhibition view DEW21 Art Prize,
Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, 2019
I feel much better since I stopped eating chocolate, 2019
mixed media installation
180 x 180 x 150 cm (steel, latex, yoga mat, c-print on fabric, plastic, resin, pu foam, wig, acrylic paint)
