Meet the Artist Harm van den Dorpel
Harm van den Dorpel’s broad practice includes sculpture, installation, works on paper, computer generated graphics and software. Rooted in the conceptual heritage of net.art, Van den Dorpel’s works often simulate neural networks. The role of technology in his works is a means to an end: a tool to increase the understanding of our experience. “I seek to produce works that explore not only the technological hardware we use in our daily lives, but how we use it, the modalities of interface that are created, enabled, facilitated and restricted by the advance of technology.”
In this episode of ‘Meet the Artists’, Art Basel spoke to artist Harm van den Dorpel and his gallerist, Martjin Djikstra from Amsterdam’s Upstream Gallery, to hear more about how traditional brick-and-mortar galleries work with artists using new technologies. Van den Dorpel’s practice negates any distinction between on- and offline work. Computer animation, interaction design, sculpture, and collage all contribute to his investigation into networks, nodes, and systems. He sat down with Dijkstra at South Beach’s legendary dive bar, Mac’s Club Deuce, to discuss his self-breeding artworks, the need to go beyond new media’s ghettoization, and today’s artist-gallerist relationship.
Represented by Upstream Gallery
(This video is part of the Meet the Artists series by Art Basel, 2019)