Born in 1982, Ed Atkins lives and works in London. The artist is well known for his immersive environments and association of high definition digital images and syncopated sound montages. A literature connoisseur, he writes his own scenarios, creating a world of digital illusions and fantasy sometimes verging on the grotesque.
Atkins subverts and exploits the conventions of high-definition moving image and text. Referred to as “part musical, part horror, and part melodrama,”. For Atkins, virtual space is liberating; “you can treat it as a surrogate world – a fantasy, or a hell, or more likely a purgatory”.
The protagonist in his film Ribbons is a white male avatar called Dave, who moans, monologues, sings, smokes and drinks profusely. Dave is often referred to as an avatar, Atkins calls him a surrogate. In contradiction with his hyperreal resemblance, he sits there in place of a human body. His digital self reflects how with online communication we can be present remotely; the body is no longer the bastion of authenticity, our identities now constructed from information.
Both compelling and repulsive, with all the compulsion of a sweet love song, Dave does not so much tell us how he feels but rather goes through the motions, hopelessly performing the act of emotional outpouring on repeat.
Atkins subverts and exploits the conventions of high-definition moving image and text. Referred to as “part musical, part horror, and part melodrama,”. For Atkins, virtual space is liberating; “you can treat it as a surrogate world – a fantasy, or a hell, or more likely a purgatory”.
The protagonist in his film Ribbons is a white male avatar called Dave, who moans, monologues, sings, smokes and drinks profusely. Dave is often referred to as an avatar, Atkins calls him a surrogate. In contradiction with his hyperreal resemblance, he sits there in place of a human body. His digital self reflects how with online communication we can be present remotely; the body is no longer the bastion of authenticity, our identities now constructed from information.
Both compelling and repulsive, with all the compulsion of a sweet love song, Dave does not so much tell us how he feels but rather goes through the motions, hopelessly performing the act of emotional outpouring on repeat.
Happy Birthday!!! is a computer-generated animation in black and white. More disturbing than its title suggests, it accords a central role to death. One also detects furtive allusions to Bruce Nauman's Self-Portrait as a Fountain (1996), Alice in Wonderland and a drawing by writer Pierre Klossowski for his book L'Adolescent immortel (1994). (Short clip below)
Even Pricks (2013) comprises a series of hyperpolished digitally rendered vignettes that relate the idea of depression—both physical and psychological—to the immaterial surfaces of images.
“Ed combines a good, dexterous grasp of new technology and an ability to infuse it with profound feeling, and that’s rare,” Polly Staples, director of the Chisenhale Gallery
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