Ed Atkins

Essays by Thomas Oberender, Helen Marten, Contemporary Art Writing Daily, Steven Zultanski, Thomas D. Trummer

The catalog was developed in close collaboration with the artist. He sheds light on Atkins' practice in the context of contemporary art, literature, and digital representation, and explores how the artist employs the shift in language and script, as well as music, voice, and sound. The artist develops a complex and deeply figurative discourse in videos, texts and drawings. The impossibilities of a sufficient representation of the physical, especially the corporeal - from the computer-generated visual vocabulary to the hackneyed poetry - are drilled through to the point of hysteria. At the center of his work is often an unidentified figure, a kind of surrogate for the artist, who is only breathed into life through Atkins' personal performance. The character finds himself in everyday situations of despair, fear, frustration, but also with room for humor. Atkins shows a number of new works in the present catalog, including "Old Food". In this work he transports us into a pseudo-historical world, idyllic landscapes and eternal ruin. Figures cry incessantly. There is no salvation in their life. Crowds tumble as the credits roll. Produced exclusively with CGI (computer-generated image material), everything in this work is understood as a fake, a lie: be it nostalgia, history, progress, authentic life or identity. Kunsthaus Bregenz.

Ed Atkins is an artist who makes videos, writes and draws, developing a complex and deeply figured discourse around definition, wherein the impossibilities for sufficient representations of the physical, specifically corporeal, world - from computer generated imagery to bathetic poetry - are hysterically rehearsed. Atkins 'works often centers on an unidentified figure, a kind of surrogate for the artist, who is animated by Atkins' own performance. The figure is to be found in situations of everyday despair, anxiety, frustration and pitch comedy. Atkins transports us to a pseudohistoric world of peasantry, bucolic landscapes and eternal ruin. Characters weep continuously, their lives devoid of dramatic redemption; crowds of people plummet while credits roll; and inedible, impossible sandwiches assemble and collapse in lurid advertisements. Produced exclusively using CGI (computer generated imagery), everything in Atkins'