Henning Lohner - Media Art

Media Art

Frank Zappa introduced Lohner to highly acclaimed cinematographer Van Theodore Carlson in 1989 to film Peefeeyatko, the biographical art film on Zappa’s life and work. Peefeeyatko spawned Lohner and Carlson’s life-long artistic partnership. It contains the first published examples of their filmic artwork. Of formative influence to the art of both filmmakers was working with composer, artist, and philosopher John Cage during the early 90s. one 11 and 103, Cage’s last work and artistic credo, in collaboration with Lohner as director and Carlson as cinematographer, is a 90-minute black and white feature film about light in an empty room; Cage also called it: „a film without subject“. It was completed just days before Cage died in August 1992. The Revenge of the Dead Indians, a film essay with composed screenplay and editing in analogy to Cage’s rigorously democratic philosophical and musical practice, was begun together with Cage in 1990 and was completed after his death in 1993. The Revenge of the Dead Indians became Lohner & Carlson’s homage to their mentor. Subsequently, Lohner & Carlson exhibited their audio-visual installation raw material, vol. 1 - 11 (1995) throughout Europe at venues such as the Gemeente Museet, in The Hague, The Sonic Arts Festival in Rome, and the Video Art Festival in Berlin. From the raw material gathered during 20 years of work in film and television, Lohner established a catalog of individual images - simply named Moving pictures - visible in any artistic or cultural context outside of narrative film or television. Lohner & Carlson’s Moving Pictures are implanted as loops on a digital canvas to hang on any wall-space like a painting. This artistic approach to the transformational nature of film raises the question of its aptitude for the essence of pictoral autonomy. They were first shown in 2006 at the renowned Springer & Winckler Gallery in Berlin. Lohner’s media art has been exhibited around the globe at such venues as: the Centre Pompidou, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, the Galleria Traghetto in Venice and Rome, the National Art Gallery of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, the Mira Art Collection in Tokyo, the Kunsthalle in Emden, and many others.