one and zero is Manfred Mohr’s first solo exhibition in London. The show presents a concise survey of his fifty-year practice. Harnessing the automatic processes of the computer, Mohr’s work brings together his deep interest in music and mathematics to create works that are rigorously minimal but have an elegant lyricism that belie their formal underpinnings. Through drawing, painting, sculpture and screen-based works, the show examines the artist’s practice through the prism of music and the idea that what is left out is as important as what remains. Mohr was one of the first visual artists to explore the use of algorithms and computer programs to make independent abstract artworks. His early computer plotter drawings– begun when he had access to one of the earliest computer driven plotter drawing machines – are delicate, spare monochrome works on paper derived from algorithms devised by the artist and executed by the computer. P198aa (1977-79) is an elegant composition of linear repetition and rhythm, that hints at multi-dimensional space. one and zero explores the forty-year influence on Mohr’s practice of the cube in 3, 4, 5, 6 and 11 dimensions and the possibilities of further, higher variations. Originally a jazz musician, he compares the form to the saxophone, and the complex improvisation that the instrument allows within fixed tonal parameters. His large-scale lacquered steel sculpture - P-499A (1993) – is composed of fifteen diagonally connecting sections evolved from Mohr’s investigation into the 6-dimensional hyper-cube. Since 1999, Mohr’s use of colour has allowed himto createmore intricate spatial relationships within two dimensions. P709b1-5, (2002), a large-scale five-panel digital print on canvas compels and intrigues with its orchestration of solid greens, blues, purples and pink. More recently, digital technologies have enabled the artist to create works such as P1411-A (2010), in which a generative algorithm based on an 11-dimensional hyper-cube manifests an evolving progression of colour and shape on a contemporary computer screen.
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