Harm van den Dorpel


Harm van den Dorpel is a Berlin-based conceptual artist. His work has been exhibited internationally in Germany, the United States, Italy, United Kingdom and the Netherlands. His broad practice includes the creation of sculpture, collage, computer animation, computer generated graphics and interaction design. He is regarded a key figure in Post-Internet art.

Work

In his work he investigates how algorithms can analyse digital archives and guide the artist in aesthetic decision taking, leading to a symbiosis of man-machine art creation. Using computer programming he describes traditional notions in art, such as for example the free use of intuition and expression. Conclusions from this research are then fed back in the production of new work.His ultimate goal is to reveal the reasoning structure of his own consciousness, and his implicit associations and assumptions. In this process he borrows ideas from psychoanalysis, the writing of Jacques Derrida, and Artificial Intelligence.
He’s had institutional exhibitions at , the New Museum in New York, The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, China, the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, and the Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam. In 2015 MAK Vienna acquired Harm van den Dorpel's Event Listeners and thereby became the first museum to purchase a work of art using bitcoins.
Between 2006 - 2010 he has been a creative programming teacher and interaction design teacher at private training centres and at the Gerrit Rietveld Art Academie in Amsterdam. Harm van den Dorpel is co-founder of a gallery that produces and sells downloadable objects. Ownership of these objects is stored in a blockchain. The gallery opened in 2015.
Harm van den Dorpel is represented by American Medium in New York, and Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam. He was previously represented by gallery Neumeister Bar-Am in Berlin until they closed in 2017.

Solo exhibitions

2016

Death Imitates Language at Neumeister Bar-Am, Berlin

2015

IOU at Narrative Projects, London
Just In Time at American Medium, New York
Ambiguity points to the mystery of all revealing at Neumeister Bar-Am, Berlin
Loomer at Young Projects, Los Angeles

2014

Emergent Conclusions – room.thecomposingrooms.com

2013

Release Early, Release Often, Delegate Everything You Can, be Open to the Point of Promiscuity at Abrons Art Center, New York

2012

About at Wilkinson Gallery, London
The Mews Project Space, London