Artists Information
Jean-Thomas Vannotti’s oil paintings convey the aesthetics of video films and video images from the virtual space onto canvas. The computer-adapted images and video stills are enlarged to much bigger sizes and then transferred onto Vannotti’s canvasses. Vannotti follows an approach that borrows from the English school of Richard Patterson or Glenn Brown. His photorealistic images are characterised by the lack of depth and the blurring peculiar to video images. Through this technique, the role that painting occupies as custodian of our memory is called into question, and the classic medium of oil painting is expanded to include the aesthetics of the new media possibilities.
«substrat.01 – oberfläche.struktur»
Jean-Thomas Vannotti was born in Neuchâtel, and lives and works in Colombier.
substrat.01 – oberfläche.struktur
In 2001, the substrat exhibition series in Berlin put on display for the first time a number of current viewpoints in contemporary art. oberfläche.struktur brought together and juxtaposed five separate artistic approaches - Florian Bach's installation work, Franziska Furter's drawings, Nicole Hassler's painting, Valentin Hitz's film/installation work, and Jean-Thomas Vannotti's painting. All the artists are Swiss and spent time in Berlin as scholarship holders on a 3 to 12-month studio residency. In the «substrat.01 - oberfläche.struktur» exhibition, they have displayed new works created during this period.
The exhibition was supported by the Swiss Embassy in Berlin, the Fonds Cantonal de Décoration et d'Art Visuel Genève, the Département de l'Instruction Publique et des Affaires Culturelles Neuchâtel, the Zug Kulturstiftung Landis & Gyr, and the Verband Schweizer Weinexporteure SWEA.
Jean-Thomas Vannotti's work «Electro Gothic» reconstructs on canvas the aesthetics of video films and images that Vannotti has painstakingly fished from the Internet. Vannotti takes video stills and computer-adapted images and enlarges them to much bigger sizes, then pixellates them and transfers the images onto canvas using brush and oil paints, in a photo-realistic way. He juxtaposes these oil paintings against two installations made from materials that he found on the streets of Berlin.
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| Prepare to be digitized
(2001) Painting Oil on canvas |
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| Once I was blind but now I see
(2001) Painting Oil on canvas |
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| Point blank (2001) Painting Oil on canvas |
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