Welcome

I’m a visual storyteller.
I predominantly focus on drawing, painting, and code.

I live and work in Vienna/Austria, and am represented by Galerie Voss (Düsseldorf) and unttld contemporary (Vienna).

 

I studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, co-organized an artist-run space, curated over forty exhibitions, wrote about art and manage a YouTube channel about creativity.

 

Fragmented Visual Storytelling

I create open-minded visual stories whose interpretations grow with their viewers. Fragments to create emotions. Atmospherics.

 

I studied Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna — in the classes of Daniel Richter, Harun Farocki and Gunter Damisch (2006-2011).

To further dive into storytelling in contemporary media,  I wrote a Doctoral Thesis (PhD) about “Painting and digital technologies” (Elisabeth von Samsonow, Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein, 2011-2015).

Together with my game development background (Rockstar Games, 2000-2006), these form the basis of my artistic practice.

Digital Analog

I blend traditional painting and drawing practices with multi-layered digital processes.

 

The final works often don’t show their underlying digital roots, which include randomized generative algorithms, a robotic drawing device and the development of a custom image abstraction software. This lets the works feature a mode of figuration that’s natively based in geometric abstraction – while keeping an analog exterior.

 

Coding and Interactivity

My bag of tricks includes Sandy Noble’s Polargraph drawing machine, the Processing prototyping environment, and “Geometries Everywhere“, my generative image and video abstraction software.

 

In development since 2015, it offers real-time glitches, numerous line tracing algorithms, creation of 3d geometry from 2d images, production of depth/space dioramas, interpretation of topology through Delaunay triangulation and Voronoi diagrams, video/vectors or high-res pixelations export  and WASD controls to navigate the virtual scenes.

Projects

I’ve been involved in a variety of projects — using various media, collaborators and ideas.

  • The Handbook for Emerging Artists is my attempt at ordering the chaos that accompanies being an artist. I’ll gradually begin to roll out its content.

  • Danis Welt is a German-language YouTube channel for kids aged 2-99. The project started with the Corona pandemic, and featured a life drawing made by me, for each episode.
     
  • On Doubt (2017-2018) is my YouTube channel on creativity. It features short documentaries based on interviews with unique creators from all sorts of fields; I started it after realizing that I wouldn’t curate physical exhibitions anymore. The project also has an accompanying website.

  • Beyond Mimesis (2013-2015) was a “research & discourse platform investigating contemporary painting conditions“. I started it when working on my PhD thesis, and used it to publish analyses of various emerging painters, with a close focus on Austrian artists of roughly my generation.
    It’s a Tumblr site that’s entirely safe to read, yet sometimes shows an (invalid) content warning.

  • Workshops & Presentations: I held presentations at various institutes about art, art writing, creative processes, the Polargraph plotter and teach the life drawing course at Art School Vienna.

  • Curating (2011-2017): I curated various exhibitions, mostly focussing emerging painting.

  • Short Films (2019): I produced three experimental short films in 2019. I didn’t fully publish them yet, but here’s information and the trailer of “Let It Come Out”.