Since 1969, Manfred Mohr has used computers and plotters as electronic and digital drawing aids, thus making inevitable that the creative process would be turned into a logical one.
In Mohr’s own words “computer graphics … are the product of unambiguously defined problems, with the detailed analysis of the programming process that have previously remained concealed as if by taboo”. (M.M.)
In the Divisibility work group, which form part of the Generative Arbeiten [Generative works] series, where the work P-306-K belong, Mohr is researching the surface character of signs made up according to defined rules laid down by the artist:
“The cube is divided into four parts by a horizontal and a vertical incision. Four independent rotations of a cube are projected into the corresponding quadrants produced by incisions. In order to make the signs visually stable, two diagonally opposite quadrants contain the same rotation”
(M.M.). P-197 J, however, makes the systematic principle transparent, through varying seriality and structural pattern.
Paths through the cube: Manfred Mohr at the Kunsthalle Bremen Prize winners of the d.velop digital art award [ddaa] 2006 Manfred Mohr is one of the pioneers of computer art.
In 2006, he received the d.velop digital art award [ddaa], which was awarded for the second time in 2006. This first major, international award in the field of digital art is donated by d.velop AG (Gescher) and annually.
The Digital Art Museum [DAM] in Berlin will award the prize, and the Kunsthalle Bremen will present the award winner in a separate exhibition.
First prizewinner of the d.velop digital art award [ddaa] 2005 was the artist Vera Molnar. Manfred Mohr has programmed from the outset himself and laid down the fundamental theme of his work, but the specific form is determined by the computer.
Born in Pforzheim, Germany, Mohr was born in Paris in 1963-81, and since then has lived in New York, Mohr is one of the first artists to see more than one graphical field in the computer.
Nevertheless, he always understood the computer as a means for his own art, independent of technical utopias. Mohr's consistently computer-generated œuvre led to a difficult position in the art system during the first years, because the computer as an artistic medium was generally viewed with skepticism by colleagues, critics and museum managers. In the meantime, Mohr's work, which has been devoted exclusively to the figure of the cube since 1973, is highly valued.
With the awarding of the d.velop digital art award [ddaa] 2006 to Mohr, his artistic approach has received a corresponding appraisal. Around 70 works by Mohr's computer-generated work are presented in the Kunsthalle - from the search for forms of a graphic language from 1969 on to the exclusive employment with the cube up to the recent examination of the cube.
Since the late 1950s, Manfred Mohr, a pioneer of generative and computer art, has been making rigorously minimal paintings and drawings. His work is stringently conceptual, but with an elegant lyricism which belies its formal underpinnings.
During the 1960s, Mohr’s practice evolved from abstract expressionism towards a more hard-edged geometric painting. By 1968, in pursuit of a ‘real rational art’ he had begun to develop a ‘programmed expressionism’ in which algorithms were used to generate art that formalised his vision in a new, logical way.
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