Eberhard Havekost

Havekost creates his paintings from his own collection of photos and videos - digitally altering the original image. The alterations are generally subtle - such as a slight change in hue, and then these changes are then translated into painting. The paintings are therefore slightly inaccurate perceptions - adjusted versions of the truth, but they actually end up making more visually pleasing images as he reaches an 'ideal image'. Havekost is interested in the city and modernist buildings, - interested in politics and the idea of a failed utopia. His work doesn't seem overtly political though - there isn't any emotive or protest-style language - but one of banality. Havekost crops images and uses extreme close-ups, which make his work almost pure abstraction. 

The process of Havekost's practice is very similar to mine in that I also collect photos and video footage from the media, and then digitally alter them. However, I also emulsion print them, in order to 'lose' even more of the image (before re-scanning and re-editing). The digitally altered images then provide plans for paintings. Havekost's images veer towards abstraction and there is an ambiguity to them - much like what I try to create with my own paintings. I want the viewers to be able to 'fill in' the story - to work out the narrative of what is happening within the images, as so much of it has been erased. Havekost's paintings also look like memories, in that they look fleeting; snapshots of time and place. I am trying to create the same thing within my own images - a collective memory of an era; a summing up of time and place. I'm also interested in the city and this dystopian view - but not so much the banality of ideal image of it. I want to show 'truth', or at least the perception we might have of an event through the media. As I am working with collective memories that I want viewers to recognise - even in my abstractions I need to keep an element of truth or familiarity, so that viewers can recognise what the images are relating to. Havekost generally creates a series of several paintings and displays them together, so they become part of a story; filling a narrative. I am hoping to do the same with my own work - create a series of images that relate to the collective memories of my generation/fellow students, and that refers to life in the city.