"Visiting American Artist 1st time in UK Laurence Garte"
1999-10-16 until 1999-11-06
Colville Place Gallery
London, , UK United Kingdom

Strangely this is the first time Laurence Gartel has exhibited in the UK, even though he has previously exhibited  throughout the world. The computer has and will continue to change our civilisation. As always, the artist, being ahead of his time, has foreseen this development and started to effect the aesthetics of our new culture. Laurence Gartel has used computers for his art for the past twenty years.

On the brink of the 21st century we are faced with a different criteria for living. Our society is all about Consumption, GM Foods, Petroleum, The Media, Television. Just how much more can we absorb, consume or digestNULL  Today we are living in an attention deficit society, people cannot concentrate on the simple, they are overloaded with media from all sides. Laurence Gartel attempts to interptret these issues.

Laurences work spans 3 decades, from the early seventies when he used experimental television equipment,  with no memory, or hard drives, just bending and colorising the images on screen from black & white video sources to nowadays working with the latest computers, software and digital cameras often before they are released. His unique style has been used for advertising by Coca-Cola and Absolut Vodka And Laurence is currently working on a project for Disney.

His use of computers helps him to push familiar images (cars, nudes, flowers) into the realm of dreams. At once, sensual and playful, Gartel‚s fiercely colourful visions provoke astonishment and pleasure as they challenge our habits of perception.

Gartels ...work vacillates intriguingly between the concrete and the abstract, beckoning us toward a fantasy realm in which vision and feeling are interdependent. There is also a sense of pure enjoyment, of experimentation for its own sake, that gives many of the works a whimsical quality. Toylike forms recur frequently as symbols of play or because they stir in us memories of a time when our minds were open to new sensation. Helen A Harrison, New York Times.--

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