HANS DEHLINGER | GALLERY

EXPANDED.ART is pleased to present PLOTTED LINES, the solo exhibition by Hans Dehlinger on view at the gallery in Berlin. The exhibition is comprised of 26 of Dehlinger’s plotter drawings of the past three decades and shows the artist’s exploration of the medium and the line. With a focus on algorithmically generated line drawings, Dehlinger bases his generative artworks on computer code executed on pen plotters, forming delicate structures, dense textures, or even evoking an unsharp impression from sharp lines.

"The line is extremely intriguing to me. Actually, rock paintings are where art begins. The line is straightforward. There is a beginning and an endpoint. What occurs in the meantime is entirely up to chance. I assert that there is a line universe. It's a distinct, limitless universe." – Hans Dehlinger

Plotter drawings are line drawings. A mechanical drawing machine, the plotter, is controlled and driven by a computer program. The drawing pen clamped into the machine moves across the paper and draws, almost like a mechanical hand. Simply put, this hand responds to three commands: lift the pen, place the pen on the paper, and move the pen. When the move pen command meets the pen is down situation, a stroke is created.

With his "Unsharp" plotter drawings, Hans Dehlinger explores ways of generating line drawings executed on pen plotters that appear to be wholly or in part unsharp, even though they are drawn with sharp lines. When viewing two converging lines, there is a point called the "minimum separabile" where the human eye stops distinguishing between two separate lines and starts seeing grayscale. It is different for each individual and is also dependent on the distance from which the two lines are viewed. This limitation of human eyesight can be artistically exploited to create "unsharp" impressions from sharp lines. Hans Dehlinger has approached this topic systematically and has applied the results to his drawings, in which "unsharp" impressions of different kinds can often be observed.