Cypher BILLBOARD

László von Dohnányi

Zombie Print

3 January - 7 March 2021 | Domino Houses Billboard, Bounds Green Road, N22 8YB

László von Dohnányi’s work engages with digital imagery through traditional techniques of making. Using painting, collage and drawing, he transfers digital images into the haptic space of analogue media.

'Zombie Print' considers the dual existence of the billboard site, its virtual and physical presence. As a part of the built environment, the billboard has been photographed, captured and rendered in digital contexts such as Google street view. Over time, the billboard has been documented displaying different posters depending on vantage-point and platform. László is interested in how this previous content persists in the digital realm long after its physical counterpart has been obscured.

In this new work, László prints images of different versions of the billboard that exist online yet are no longer visible on the physical site. Shredding the individual prints into strips, he reassembles the fragments by hand to create a hybrid collage. 'Zombie Print' addresses the posters’ digital coexistence by physically merging the different versions into one chimeric print. The pasting of segments and discontinuities between the strips form a layered effect characteristic of electronic multimedia, specifically a visual style that privileges fragmentation, indeterminacy, and heterogeneity.

'Zombie Print' explores how the printed media of the poster artwork is part of a wider technological assemblage as well as processes of remediation, whereby one media is used to consider or reconstruct another.

The billboard artwork will be accompanied by an audio segment for local North London radio station Threads airing in January 2021. 

Zombie Spectogram: Threads Radio

Tuesday 9 February 2021, 1-2pm

www.threadsradio.com

A discussion between László von Dohnányi and Cypher BILLBOARD’s Amba Sayal-Bennett, Holly Graham, and Erin Hughes, exploring notions of technological transformation, and featuring audio interpretations of László’s Bounds Green billboard artwork created using text recognition software. This is the first of a series of five artist-commissioned radio shows developed for Threads Radio as part of Cypher BILLBOARD’s 2021 programme.

László von Dohnányi (b. 1990, Germany) graduated with a BFA from the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford in 2012. He also holds a BA in Architecture from University College London. Laszlo is currently studying MA Painting at the Royal College of Art. He lives in London. 

www.laszlovondohnanyi.com

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