BROOKLYN, NY — The work of Maxon Cinema 4D user/3D artist Mike Winkelmann, best known in the creative community as Beeple, will be on display at “Crap: A Beeple Retrospective.” Presented by the Made in NY Media Center (http://nymediacenter.com) by IFP gallery in DUMBO, Brooklyn, the show runs February 1st through the 28th.
The exhibition features the extensive body of motion graphics work and VJ clips Winkelmann has created the past decade and a half for some of the world’s most prolific electronic musicians, including deadmau5, Skrillex, Avicii, Zedd, Taio Cruz, Tiësto, Amon Tobin, Wolfgang Gartner, and Flying Lotus, and many others. Winkelmann is a graphic designer from Appleton, WI. His short films have screened at Miami Art Basel, onedotzero, Prix Ars Electronica, the Sydney Biennale, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and many others. For over the past ten-and-a-half years, Winkelmann has earned a global reputation not only for his creative prowess and his body of work created with Cinema 4D, but for originating the concept of “everydays,” where he crafts a new piece of art every day – start to finish. He then makes his project files freely available for the art community to dissect and learn. Sometimes the asset gets put into a video or short film, other times it is created just for the sake of sharpening his craft. Under the Creative Commons license Winkelmann also makes available his VJ clips for both commercial and non-commercial work in any form.
Thomas Rotenberg, digital media and gallery manager at Made in NY Media Center by IFP and curator of “Crap: A Beeple Retrospective,” has been a long time fan of Winkelmann’s work and explains that after ‘playing around’ with Cinema 4D, came to respect his skill even more. He eventually pitched Winkelmann on a show that would take advantage of the Media Center’s gallery space and recontextualize his work in a more formal setting.
“There’s a big difference between seeing Mike’s work as part of a VJ set and seeing it in a gallery setting, and I hope that the latter forces more casual viewers to see the incredible artistry that he puts forth in every piece,” says Rotenberg. “Mike’s work is relevant to the entire art world – not only is he pushing technique forward in ways most people could’ve never imagined - he’s changing the way art is distributed by breaking down the traditional channels and giving it all away for free. Mike is one of the most important creators working today and it’s important for his work to be viewed in a way that presents the full scope of his technical and creative evolution.”
"Cinema 4D really has been the backbone of almost all of the work that I do both with ‘everydays’ and with the motion work that I do,” says Winkelmann. “The software has such flexibility and works with so many other programs that anytime something new comes along, I can always find a way to work it into my existing workflow without a huge disruption. It's been amazing to see the progression over the years and I can't imagine working without it."