Stefan Saalfeld is fascinated by the synthesis of drawing, painting and generative software art. He combines digital techniques with many years of painting experience to produce a vibrant stream of images. Using the computer, he generates compositions of dense colour lines that overlap, or run alongside one another. Refined breaks in the horizontal lines appear like digital sound waves with stop and search systems. Some works comprise up to forty individual layers. Mythical creatures and figures jump between these layers like chimeras between pop art and post modernism that might have just come out of from a time machine.

As a clever final touch, Saalfeld adds something otherwise lacking in digital images: a patina, grunge, the wear and tear of life. The otherwise sterile and blemish-free works are given a vintage look, lending them romance and honesty. The artist achieves this authenticity by overlaying different elements, texts and patterns, in multiple levels. What emerges is a digital painting that far exceeds the boundaries of analogue imagery and amazes us with its remarkable detail. It is this combination of technological elements and organic shapes that makes Saalfeld’s images such exciting discoveries.

Christina Wendenburg

1962	Born in Ingolstadt, Germany
1982-1986	Apprenticeship in Cabinet making, Munich, Germany
1987-1993	Studied Interior Design at Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich, Germany
1986	Began painting
1993-1999	Freelancer in various architecture and design offices in Munich and Berlin, Germany
2005	Began working with digital art
	Lives and works in Munich

Exhibitions (Selection)

2012	84 GHz, Munich, Germany
	Laughing in the Mechanism, The Wand, Berlin, Germany
2011	Stefan Saalfeld Showroom, Munich, Germany
2006	Gallery art-ig, Munich, Germany
1996	Gallery Waskowiak, Berlin, Germany
1994	Gallery Blechen, Munich, Germany

www.stefansaalfeld.de