Bastien
Welcome to Artists Featured. A newsletter of an artist trying to support other artists.
As I embark on the journey to write an editorial on Klaus's art, I find myself indecisive which of the elements of his style speak the most to me.
Is it his ability to combine seemingly incompatible sets of colours, the all-encompassing redgreenblues (RGBs) and the clever contrast play that follows their use? Or maybe is it another example of great contrast that appeals to me so much, the dynamics?
Spend a few seconds looking at any of his artworks. It is easy to get immersed in the flowingness of it. The single movements are jagged and wonky, yet the overall dynamic of most of his pieces is a smooth flow.
As I think about it, I think the most obvious winner of what's so great about Klaus's art is the fact that it's analog video. The second I found him on Farcaster I knew I had to write an editorial about his art.
For the last 2 years I have been a digital artist. Many times I had thought that I'd love to be able to create digital visual art in an analog way. I used to be jealous of the musicians, that they were able to fiddle some buttons and create art. I wanted something similar for visual art. And then I found Klaus. Klaus does that.
His style roots far back into his days of VJing (Visual Jockey), an underappreciated art form that creates the visuals you can see while raving in a club or on a festival.
When you observe his art and focus the attention on the overall aesthetics of what he does, you can pretty easily spot the effects of these underground (are they still?) influences.
The principle of how the analog-to-digital process works seems pretty straightforward. I will quote Klaus here:
You connect the mixer between TV and camera and then just point camera to TV to get some video feedback and use mixer to put some effects in between.
Simple, right? It's just mixers and other hardware altering the video signals.
However, in practice it feels so unreal. People nowadays are used to a life in digital sphere, a lot of them are even terminally online. What is fascinating to me is the barrier, the moment of transition from the physical to the digital. And that is where people like Klaus excel, where they easily catch my attention.
With his creations, he becomes the link between you sitting in front of your screen, and you as a pfp somewhere in the metaverse (ugh). Maybe his art even shows how we transpose ourselves to the digital sphere, a bit distorted and glitchy?
Klaus craftily creates an on point mixture between raw and noisy '80s effects and an alien-like digital cultures of early '00s. The result is a fascinating glitch amoeba in a crisp blurriness of a video signal.
He plays the game of contrast well. Below I summed up the contrasts I am able to see in his art.
Glitch elements Smooth animation
Physical world Digital sphere
Red Green Blue in their extreme tones
All of these work together amazingly and invite you to wander a bit in his sea of noise and colours.
I have enjoyed observing Klaus's art. Grateful that I had the chance to write about it. I definitely invite everyone to follow up on the links below and enjoy the animated versions. Maybe even scoop a piece or two, I will.
Before you do so, please consider subscribing to this newsletter. I drop it every two weeks and the goal is to support artists whose art I love and admire.
Price ranges: 1/1s on eth up to 0.2 Ξ, tezos pieces mostly around 20-30 tez.
Chains: Ethereum, Tezos
Links:
Farcaster: https://warpcast.com/klauzzz
Twitter profile: https://twitter.com/klazmandoo
Foundation: https://foundation.app/@klauzzz
Objkt: https://objkt.com/@klaus
