Art Review in Winnipeg Free Press

Artist explores intersection of tradition and technology
by Stacey Abramson

Connections between old and new media in artwork create important and engaging visual conversations about the changing face of contemporary art. Local artist Derek Bruekner examines these changes, and also looks at how technology is affecting the human body, through his works in Watching Velocity Dry -- a series of digitally altered painting and prints.

These latest works by Bruckner show the artist exploring the relationships between digital and traditional artistic media. Cre8ery's manager Jordan Miller says viewers have been noting that the works show the University of Manitoba school of art professor "breaking free" from his former method of working, which leaned toward the more traditional side of painting. Continue reading...

Brueckner's Solo Exhibition Watching Velocity Dry at Cre8ery

Artist Statement for "Watching Velocity Dry":

Currently working with technology in relation to drawing/painting and the figure/body. The work involves dialectics (exchange of conflicting ideas) encompassing the processes of haptic (hand made), ocular and digital image making.

The result of this dialectic attempts to bridge and or blur the pictorial spaces of physical paint processes with the dematerialization of Photoshop. Ultimately the work explores a reaffirmation of painting/drawing in relation to the ambivalence of technology.

The subject matter that culminates within the work references corporeal entities, mutations, cell division, systems, patterns, or spectacle. Overall the work’s imagery and processes becomes a metaphor for the cultural impact of technology in and on the body and the way the body feels and perceives.

In the end it is my hope that the fusion of a painter’s sensibility with Photoshop will slow down or offer a subtle resistance to the sonic production and consumption of digital imagery.

Brueckner presents on a panel at the 2008 Annual College Art Association Conference in Dallas

http://conference.collegeart.org/sessions2008/sessions08.html

The Search for Vision's Body: The Role of Touch in the Practice of Painting and Architecture
Wednesday, February 20, 2:30 PM–5:00 PM
Houston Ballroom C, 3rd Floor, Adam's Mark Hotel
Chairs: Thomas Berding, Michigan State University; Sanda Illiescu, University of Virginia

The Tactility of Vision; or, Experiencing Painting and Sculpture in Scarpa’s Castelvecchio and Canoviano Galleries
Nathaniel Coleman, New Castle University

Trace and Artifice
Jill Moser, independent artist, New York

Threshold Connections: Dialectics of Cybernetic Dematerialization and the Physicality of Painting
Derek Brueckner, University of Manitoba

In Search of the Tactilists: A Survey of Contemporary Haptic Aesthetes
Jennifer Justice, independent scholar, Chicago

Touch Is Essential: The "magic of the real world" in the Work of Peter Zumthor
Phoebe Crisman, University of Virginia

Discussant: Scott Poole, Virginia Tech

New images and videos are added to the website:

Digital Images (2007)
Installation Views
Large Paintings
Small Paintings
Videos
Commissioned Work