Iris Helena Hamers

Lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany

Artist statement

Iris Helena Hamers works with digital, algorithmic and synthetic image material that she transforms into spatial objects and installations. Fragments are extracted from pictorial environments like social media platforms, online shops, image search engines, online shops and maps. She combines them with her own snapshots and staged photographs and AI generated products. In their digital condition these images have no fixed size, number, composition or location and are perceived primarily as representations through their transmission via screens. Their material states recede in reception, as our perceptual habit of screens is that of a transparent interface. Images appear in algorithmically controlled sequences, in constant motion and often subordinated to a function. The viewing body is stagnant. By transferring the image materiality into the form of print on panels installed in physical space in a way that requires bodily movement around the object to grasp it, the image mode is altered. Size, number, composition and position are fixed. The images gain a presence that surpasses their representational content and come to the fore as images in themselves and material entities. The specific aesthetics, image properties and visual languages become particularly visible in contrast to the physical space.

Artwork