Render Bender

[Dave Monroe]

Render Bender
James Huckenpahler reinvents the landscape photo.
By Kriston Capps
Posted: November 21, 2007


At the climax of Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow, Tyrone
Slothrop falls apart: His mental state becomes "one circuit diagram
out of hundreds in a smudged yellowing sheaf." James Huckenpahler
finds that sort of breakdown appealing: He used a working title of
Pynchon's epic for his new show of digital prints, "Mindless
Pleasures," now on display at Hemphill Fine Arts. "That title seemed
like how people approach abstraction," says Huckenpahler. "I'm sure
that's the way a lot of readers approach Gravity's Rainbow—like it's
the equivalent of ­written wallpaper."

The pieces on display are carefully staged landscape
photographs—though the landscapes are imaginary tableaux the artist
created after graduating from Illustrator and Photoshop to more
sophisticated 3-D software. "I got to a place where I wanted to do
richer, more complicated forms," says the 38-year-old Dupont Circle
artist.

The landscapes are products of using the software in ways for which it
wasn't intended. The technology is meant to make a 3-D digital
rendition of a photographed object, Huckenpahler says, "which, you
know, if you use the software right, is a reasonably accurate model.
If you use it incorrectly, as I did—all kinds of really cool, weird,
interesting stuff."

The genesis for all the images in the show was a figurine of the
Japanese superhero Ultraman. As processed by the artist, the figure
isn't recognizable: Huckenpahler concentrates on the warped spaces
that the software creates around the figure. Having settled on the
figurine as an anti-model in place, creating the works in "Mindless
Pleasures" was merely a matter of exploration: finding vistas within
the 3-D spaces and photographing them.

The negative imprints left by Ultraman produce what look like bizarre
roads and bridges crisscrossing space. But Huckenpahler also means to
comment on mechanical reproduction; even though his work exists in a
stream of ones and zeros, "Mindless Pleasures" mimics the evolution of
photography.

"There's stuff that looks more photographic because I've blurred it
out or added film grain," he says. "There's the engraving stuff, which
is definitely the heart of the 19th century. And then there's stuff
where you can definitely see angles and stuff—definitely
computer-generated, 20th-, 21st-century thing."

Huckenpahler recognizes that the images are distanced from larger
concerns. "At least not explicitly, this doesn't deal with bigger
stuff outside of, you know, James, James' head, James' world," he
says. "I am starting to wonder, how is this a reflection of what's
going on in the world?" But he sees echoes of human abstractions in
his digital ones. "That's analogous to what goes on in your brain when
you're dreaming," he says. "Computers do the same thing—just not as
elegantly."

"Mindless Pleasures" shows at Hemphill Fine Arts, 1515 14th St. NW, to
Dec. 22; call (202) 234-5601.

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