Oliver Lardner

My name is Oliver Lardner, I am a visual artist and my research led practice revolves around contemporary notions of artistic labour.

In 2020 Artists are rarely admired for their technical ability alone, but instead their contribution to the expansion of our shared cognitive surfaces. A cognitive surface refers to an additional attribute belonging to an art work which is able to stretch a public and shared imagination in some way: to shift the cognitive surface. When this relationship is operating correctly, artists can create new ways of understanding the world and in this way create more space than either they or their works occupy. Historically this conceptual expansion came primarily through engagement with new and emerging technologies. However, unusually perhaps, artists who were once guardians of this important role now actively fight against this paradigm. We can now observe many contemporary painters persisting with a business-as-usual approach, creating paintings that perpetuate preexisting surfaces, which further cement exisiting boundaries that surfaces can also create.

Drawing upon my experiences as a programmer, specifically with writing code art, I wish to apply the political and inherently anarchistic qualities of digital distribution and code art to the idea of a ‘painted’ surface and traditional notions of artistic labor. My practice led investigation takes this as an entry point into a multi-perspectival form, with the audience themselves constituting the final surface.