Burkhard Lohren - Katalog GO WEST

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MIXED MEDIA ARTWORK BY BURKHARD LOHREN
For several years, artist Burkhard Lohren has been using photo alteration techniques and digital art work. First he
produced New York and Cuba themed collages which were reproduced by license holders, who merchandised his
work throughout Europe. Lohren was a trailblazer for a special kind of modern trendy living. Among other things,
his work deals with issues of our time, with intentional and sometimes unintentional clichés about the United States
of America. In Lohren‘s work, it is not so much about pictorial quotations, rather he adds new dimensions regarding
content by means of unexpected combinations, eg. excerpts from texts. His mixed-media-work, consisting of
these pictorial and textual elements, are both contemporary and appealing. By isolating and illustrating particular
elements, Lohren’s work utilizes collage classical principles, but this is not the only analogy with the icons of Pop Art.
His special composing method reminds us of Roy Lichtenstein‘s „Combine Paintings“, in which Lichtenstein developed
new design-possibilities evolving from the collages‘ principle by integrating photographical elements into the
printing process of his oil paintings. Lohren works comparably to this when he transfers his PC-developed digital
composings by state-of-the-art printing methods upon his canvases that he had primed with different-coloredcoatings
first. In an additional design step, the prints would sometimes be partially accented by intrusional paintingelements.
The resulting hybrid form consisting of digital collage and painting gives the surface a multidimensional
look, in which color-layers and pictorial elements penetrate each other and melt into a oneness.
In 2017, Lohren first printed his composings onto tin plates. Spectacular, glimmering metallic effects which occur
depending on various reflexions, caused by different angles of lighting, characterize these works of art.
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In addition, Lohren uses the serial principle, an approach also formerly followed by Pop Art pioneers - especially
by Andy Warhol. Here he manages imposingly to unite alien with own objects as well as things that were
spatially and chronologically separated and to transform this into a convincing image statement. The artist is a skillful
arranger who knows how to stage fragments as references to complex relationships in order to develop entire
new stories.
And this is also Pop - the inclusion of trivial and sophisticated things as well as the melting of mass-culture and fineart.
Lohren succeeds to show the viewer alternatives to everyday mainstream and to deliver innovating modern
art. Amerikazentrum Hamburg shows a selection of Lohren‘s collages whose content deal with US-issues, as well
as brand new and never-shown-yet pieces on tin plate.
bURKHARD lOHREN - go west 2018