Brussels Flamingo : Contemporary art and new media
Exhibitions
Nico roicke
The Metal Years
Nico Roicke critically reflects on motifs and aesthetics of pop culture, media and mass consumption. He uses found footage, so parts and scenes from pre-existing film as working material. By assembling film components from totally different origin with 3-D animation and comic strip he discloses astonishing similarities between them and creates an altogether new aesthetic.
At the same time he likes to delude watching patterns and expectations as for example in ‘Panzer’ (2005). In this video the ironic discrepancy between viewer expectation and its delusion develops an almost hypnotic spell. The video shows how a mass product (the panzer) is developed and marketed without even alluding to its (assumingly obvious) primary designation. Instead, throughout the notion of a panzer as the universal solution to everyone’s problems prevails. It is the perfect gift in any situation, the best holiday companion, it makes children happy and so on while the spectator inevitably expects scenes of war. ‘Panzer’ was last shown at the ‘Videonale 11’ at Kunstmuseum Bonn and won the ClipAward at Backup Festival, Weimar in 2005.
In ‘26/20 (Sol where is it?)’ Roicke poignantly balances on the thin line between irresistible packaging and poisoned content by experimenting with the visual and aesthetical possibilities that weapons and military vehicles like helicopters, planes and war-ships offer. Backed by the accompanying music ever new compositions of weapons, all set against a black (and consequently not located) background develop a pull towards ever more weapons assembled in ever more sophisticated patterns. In combining the aesthetics of American military found footage of the 50s/ 60s with 3-D computer-animation Roicke creates a timeless and extraordinarily beautiful war machine. Yet, with location being a key premise in war, it is a purely visually working system.
His latest work ‘Chopper’ from 2008 is a linear One-Channel video set against the war in Vietnam, also called ‘Chopper war’. As the war in Vietnam in many ways served as a catalyst for pop culture, Roicke uses found footage of the time combined with patterns from comics about Vietnam that with their grid strongly remind of works by Roy Lichtenstein. Roicke highlights to which great an extent the Vietnamese jungle became inextricably intertwined with the corresponding jungle of military weapons and helicopters involved. The sheer inconceivable mass of soldiers and helicopters develop a hallucinatory situation allowing for becoming ‘High on war’ a slogan which some US-soldiers even wrote on their helmets.
Since 2007 Nico Roicke, born in 1979, has been studying Communication Design, and Digital Media (M.A.) at London’s Saint Martins College of Art & Design. He got a Bachelor of Arts in European Media Studies at the University of Potsdam, Germany.
Exhibition „Nico Roicke– The Metal Years“,
26 June until 2 August 2008
Vernissage: 26 June 2008, 6-9pm