photosample :
extract of a photography. A few pixels left from an image : The CityFictions are built with these atoms.
photosource :
the original photography behind the new composition.
Altnacht :
contraction of the English alteration and the German Nacht .
CityFictions :
pictures of impossible cities made from pictures of real cities.
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In September 2005, Altnacht made six pieces for an art exhibition held at the Architecture School of Montpellier, France. Altnacht s technique ‒ though still young ‒ is the foundation of a new series. He works with new material i.e. pixels that tell stories. Out of dark spaces, gently comes the light. Both spaces and forms are abstract and real and surreal.
The tools Altnacht uses are: additions, duplications and distortions of pixels. No urban scenery yet, just a new digital species.
Syntaxe
Saint Signe
2005, Montpellier (Fr.), 75x50cm E1/1
2005, Palavas (Fr.), 75x50cm sold (1)
altnacht altnacht
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The original photography is still present and exists as taken. These pictures are de-constructrions of a real pictured world. There is still a photography in each piece. Mutations of forms, targetting and classifying the best photosamples. altnacht
Floue-Raison 2005, Montpellier (Fr.), 75x50cm sold (1)
Entropie A r c e n Te r r e
2005, Barcelona, 75x50cm sold (1)
2005, Sete (Fr.), 75x50cm E1/1
altnacht
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altnacht
The era of photo collage is gone, the photosamples are hardly visible and the cut lines are erased.
Altnacht s manipulation spreads to the whole image.
Inhorizon 2005, Agde (Fr.), 50x75cm sold (1)
PortBridge 2005, Barcelona, 80x54cm E2/3
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The path to the horizon. Waterways and Highways breaking up the horizon. An idea of depth is added to the technique. Each part of the photosource is distorted. Each part of the photosource is recognizable.
WinterWindow 2006, Bollène (Fr.), 80x50cm sold (2)
Redoxygen 2005, Lyon, 75x35cm sold (1)
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Above the city, its own replica. A hologram pinned on and in between reality and imagination. The city is augmented towards the sky that is kept intact. Whereas urban arteries give depth to the 2D photo, the deformation by addition adds a fourth dimension to the subject hence revealing the characteristics of a place ‒ False surrounds True.
SkyBeam Station 2006, Montpellier, 75x50cm E1/1
Seven 2006, Sète (Fr.), 60x40cm sold (1)
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The laws of perspective are violated. The hierarchy of forms is not respected. The scaling of the composition is alien. Breaking free from standard perspective widens the ďŹ eld of free style composition. Altnacht is looking for another line... The line who could cross through the horizon.
Wayscape 2006, Berlin, 50x75cm E1/3
2006, Bundi, 50x75cm E1/1
Architect
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The sky is toned down in the whole composition. Here, the hologram copy eats away the original picture. The scene is understandable yet impossible. Bland concrete landscapes suddenly explode with colours, buildings become lighter and spread high in the sky.
2006, Berlin, 75x50cm E3/3
Potsdam
2006, Berlin, 75x50cm E1/3
Sabre
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The birth of an architectural monster, the sick cells of urban life. A massive structure on the ground: our light and weak ground that may disappear. The atmosphere is heavy, the battle between the Earth, the ground, the sky and the City we live in has started.
2007, Hannover, 114x76cm E2/3
Acercle
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Subtle photosampling, hard and sharp recomposition. Building spaces. Elements are leaving the ground. Parts of the dark and massive city are escaping the ground.
2007, Bundi, 114x76cm E1/3
Palacine
2007, Montpellier, 80x55cm E1/3
The Observatory Lab
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Angophii 2007, Montpellier, 50x75cm E1/1
Here, the ground is disintegrated and re-integrated. The main transformation is happening all over the picture and becomes the new subject. Through a concave, convex or closed line the architectural composition appears.
2007, Berlin, 75x50cm E1/3
2007, Venice, 60x30cm sold (1)
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The
Va m p s c e n e
LightStadt Parade
Icenaut 2007, Gerardmer (Fr.), 75x50cm E1/3
This is not water. This is a step to make the ground disappear. This is a liquid ground. Within the CityFiction Series the ground may be rock, liquid or gas. In 2007, the ground is still positioned at the bottom and rather straight in appearance. The sky is heavily charged with the energy that explodes the architecture.
The Elementary Watt 2007, Sète (Fr.), 75x50cm E1/3
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The First Producer’s Panorama 2008, 140x50cm E1/3
Where s the ground ? The cityscape is detached from it. Is there any ground ? altnacht
A skyscraper that does not sit on the ground is a spaceship. However, these are not the Space Fictions Series, they simply are outer city architecture. This is our home without any sky, without any ground, in between two places.
SkyBy 2
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altnacht
2008, 90x50cm E1/3
Regain 2007, Hannover, 50x75cm E1/3
Skyscrapers and the sky, space shifts and the space and ...the City Soul. A sky with two suns, not on Earth though it looks like it; maybe not even on a planet. Space Stations arriving... holograms, confusion or straight lines ?
altnacht
Aurora 90 2008, Melun Fr., 90x50cm E1/3
altnacht
SkyBy 1 2006, 110x65cm E1/1
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Paris: a tree and its reection. It s raining vegetation on a balcony. On the left, the architectural landscape is reversed. The architectural holograms give the direction the distorted perpective cannot bring.
altnacht
2008, Paris, 87x40cm E2/3
The Hat *Gold
The Hat is a magical pictire with so many hidden symmetries and a unique combination of colours.
Parathes 2008, Paris, 40x60cm E1/3
The Hat 2007, Paris, 140x70cm E2/3
altnacht
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Dustmachine *Color 2008, Sydney, 55x80cm E1/1
Dustmachine 2007, Sydney, 70x100cm, sold (1)
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altnacht
Dustmachine is a micro series. It s an ode to our urban self-regeneration by destruction . The city is a body, mutating endlessly. We are its micro-organisms. We are components of a mineral species.
Dustmachine *Pop 2010, Sydney, 55x80cm E1/1
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Paris : take 2 La Defence re-looked. A concentration of buildings ready to take off. A public warning before desertification. The forum is almost empty. All horizontal spaces are merging towards two vanishing points only separated by a long forgotten temporal space. Vertical spaces are a second exit to a mineral sky that doesn t reflect any light. The light that doesn t originate from the sky but from the projection of the source image. The City pays homage to itself before escaping from itself.
Peerport 2008, Paris, 150x75cm E1/5
altnacht
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Corp 2008, Paris, 33x65cm E1/5
Distorted urban spaces have become the central subject and it crushes down the leftovers of a real landscape that is overcome by this new presence. It s no longer a hologram over the city. It s the first sighting of a new entity ‒ stifling the original city.
Baktria 2007, Lyon, 65x100cm E1/3
Octane 2008, Lyon, 75x50cm E2/3
altnacht
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The idea of an urbanscape replaces the landscape. Nothing s left to believe, nothing s left to comprehend. Our eyes are seeing bits of actual structures, which are mutating into a mineral photography ‒ yet, a warm one ‒ unreal ‒ just about...
Anaphore 2009, Miami, 75x41cm E2/3
altnacht
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The Director’s Cut 2008, Paris, 125x60cm E2/3
altnacht
Beyond the horizon, behind the last point, a vanishing light indicates the end of a day, the end of a City. A vanishing light that sucks up the City and the composition ‒ not the eye. Our vision is filtered by these real bits ‒ hanging from the sky and vertically filling up the skies. In 2008, the atmosphere remains horizontal.
Daltayin 2007, Lyon, 125x47cm E2/3
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A sky below an artificial ground. The City is like a stratus between two atmospheres. Above the sky... another sky. Here the habitat is an in-between space ‒ unfinished. Domosphere is a CityFiction : an area were unstable dwellings are accumulating.
2009, Paris, 80x40cm E1/3
Domosphere
Domosphere Mars
altnacht
altnacht
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Nouveau Syndrome 2009, Paris, 95x45cm E1/3
The imagined urbanscape disturbs our sense of real . Matter has been shaken. There is an ideal body linking our thoughts with our home ‒ this very body spreads out and alters our perception.
altnacht
We are biased. This is not architecture. These are mineral organs that digest our time, manage our lives, our doings, and our memory.
altnacht
Haussmann Syndrome 2009, Paris, 100x55cm E1/3
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Jonathan Borofsky s Molecule Man giant sculpture is distorted and becomes the symbol of a relative verticality of our bodies. Skycrapers and clouds are disputing the same line. Clouds are the new cityscrapers . Tearing humans.
Cut Human 2009, Berlin, 130x50cm E1/3
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Another monument : Pei s Pyramid is an intervention on an historical site. The CityFiction does not take the Pyramid o the ground. It pushes it down onto a digital ground. An idea of a ground, an idea of a pyramid. The pyramid is the mineral body over the City that takes us from reality back to concept : a presence.
2009, Paris, 180x65cm E1/3
L e L o u v r e i s a n U n d e r g r o u n d Ve n u e
altnacht
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Clouds are at a merging point between the sky and the sea, sucking up the city. This ultra-wide view of London is an invitation to go beyond the vanishing point via the London Eye. Everything vanishes. Common sense ends here. Common photography is forgotten. Memory does not aect the CityFictions anymore. This isn t a hologram any longer upon an actual city. These are new imaginary landscapes. Mindscapes projected onto a city.
An Eye On London 2009, London, 160x60cm E1/3
altnacht
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The CityFictions leave a deconstructed Earth. All other planets are still uninhabitable. The Earth is damaged. Mindscapes projected outside the Earth, freeing composition again.
The Disillusion with a Second Planet 2010, Berlin, 150x84cm E1/3
altnacht
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The Mind Liner : rejecting cities on a naked ground... It may be on an other planet. The naked mind. Freedom.
The Mind Liner 2010, London, 160x67cm E1/3
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’s
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The city explodes, melting with the sky. Everything will melt. The Buttery Eect is the birth of a black hole.
The Butterfly Effect 2010, London, 150x84cm E1/3
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When Altnacht leaves Maths School, his creations are rather classic (abstract-organic paintings). He then enters Architecture School where he gains thorough knowledge in applied geometry. Flying over the wall of formal conservatism, he uses digital imagery to create pictures ‒ remarkable for their expressiveness ‒ rather than raw architecture. Medium and media change : paintbrushes and pencils are out; digital tools and photographic discourse are in. Architectural and urban subjects are first to be dealt with. The aim is to shake the audience s perception (visually and emotionally) : free forms, distorted urban regeneration and architectural imagery, tortured vanishing points. Both the image and the subject are freely de-constructed and re-constructed. Then representation succeeds to design. In 2007, Altnacht dedicates himself to creating the CityFictions Series. Three years later, the Series comprise over 50 pieces: alliance of technical experience, personal development, and no boundary imagination. Another door of perception opens onto a new world. Exploration to be continued... The first pieces of the CityFictions Series were a collection of architectural outgrowths. They now have evolved into a representation of a new world ‒ real and imaginary. The CityFictions Series challenge both our perception of a place and of its memory, making us aware of our inability to identify one without the other. At the point where architectural projection, photography, and digital art meet, the CityFictions Series is a collection of real, almost unrecognizable landscapes, which, through the artist s interpretation, have become the dramatization of a fantasized and amplified urbanscape.
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It s not about futurism, nor sci-fi, nor anticipation. The CityFictions Series base and build the photo report upon the augmented reality of a universe and the artist s own abstract, oniric, fantastic, and surreal expression. The last 30 years have seen a surge in global activities and local destructions. Ten years into the 21st century, men live in huge metropolises ‒ taking more and more ground space and sky space. They stack up in already overcrowded spaces, densely populated areas. They can t wait to walk on Mars... and they collide with Nature. For too many a decade, men have acted as if the environment was stable and immutable. Tectonic movements have been changing the face of our landscapes. Human activities have been adding to it. Chernobyl nuclear accident (1986), Kobe earthquake (1995), 9-11 (2001), Sumatra Tsunami (2004), are natural and man induced local events that dramatically modify both our landscapes and the way we perceive them. Our fairly recent awareness of a fast and man induced climate change has forced us to face reality: our environment is ever changing ‒ permanently unstable. Be the changes sudden or slow, loud or silent, natural or man induced, we can t help but dreading the next catastrophe. Since 2005, Altnacht s work stands at the crossroads of global catastrophes and urban expansion. Landscapes explode; monumental structures are transformed and softened. Architecture imagery is the tool to move our habitats off the ground; architecture imagery is the vector to create new concepts of extreme climatic and spatial mobilities.
Wayscape ©altnacht 2006
Kobe earthquake 1995 ©NISEE
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