Opening at the Arndean Gallery in London's Cork Street on October 17, Imirage presents a unique, entirely new artform. Jeffrey Kroll has developed a marriage of mobile phone photography and painting which is completely without precedent and takes printmaking in the painterly tradition into the 21st century.
Jeffrey Kroll is known and collected for his luminous, painterly abstract paintings. He is very much wedded to paint as a medium, although he began exploiting digital print technology several years ago. He started experimenting with a Nokia camera phone last summer, and has used it to marry two mediums - the digital photograph and hand-applied paint, to create truly extraordinary and groundbreaking paintings.
Jeffrey first paints one of his signature abstract canvases. He then photographs it using a state of the art Nokia N90 camera phone. The photograph is then printed onto canvas on a massive scale, using the latest EPSON large-format graphic printer. Jeffrey further embellishes and elaborates on the image with paint, to flesh out the composition. The end result is a subtle and deceptive interaction of painted space and digital space; a fusion of monoscopic space from the eye of the camera and stereoscopic space from the eyes of the painter.
Acclaimed American printmaker, Ken Tyler, who worked with artists from Lichtenstein to Hockney and has been recently exhibited at Tate Liverpool and Tate Modern, was quoted recently in RA Magazine:
'The marriage of new technology and ideas with art techniques ancient as civilisation itself (i.e. drawing). This is a dichotomy ideal for fine art printmaking and artistic collaborations. The art business isn't doing enough to celebrate and combine the technology of digital imagery with the power of the human hand. Yet there are great possibilities, maybe even the greatest artistic opportunities in printmaking lie ahead.'
The completed paintings express profound colour, translucency and form, works of art that carry the time-honoured tradition of the etchings and prints into the 21st century, and transform it.
New York born Kroll is based in California and Stratford-upon-Avon. His work is widely collected - collectors include film director Francis Veber and the de Rothschild family as well as many corporate collections. His paintings have been described by Tatler as 'extraordinary and beautiful' and by The Times as 'striking, colourful and rather beautiful.' His work has been shown in spaces as diverse as the windows of Harrods in Knightsbridge and the galleries of the Louvre in Paris.
The flagship camera product in Nokia's newly launched Nokia Nseries range of high performance multimedia devices, the new Nokia N90 is set to revolutionize the mobile photography market. It is the first mobile device to feature superior Carl Zeiss optics in addition to a range of advanced camera functions, including a 2 megapixel camera with autofocus and 20x digital zoom, integrated flash, macro mode for sharp close-ups and high quality video capture and on device editing.
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Notes to Editors
1. Imirage is at the Arndean Gallery, Cork Street, London W1. 17-23 October 2005.
2. Exhibition hours are 10.00 - 6.00 pm
3. Jeffrey Kroll and is available for interview and comment through Colman Getty PR
4. Images are available from Colman Getty or from www.krollogy.com/jpg
5. Further information is available on www.imirage.co.uk
6. Jeffrey used an EPSON Stylus Pro 10600 printer to print the primary images to canvas using the Fine Art Printing expertise of Jonathan Burns at 'Wall Candi Ltd'. The Stylus Pro is a 44-inch wide, six-colour printer with high speeds of up to 20m_ per hour. www.wallcandi.com
7. Jeffrey's London agents are Serena Morton and Georgie Leatham of Floating Spaces. Floating Spaces represents artists, stages one-off exhibitions and sources artworks for private and corporate clients. For further information, please contact serena@floatingspaces.com, 07904 636910
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8. About Nokia
Nokia is a world leader in mobile communications, driving the growth and sustainability of the broader mobility industry. Nokia connects people to each other and the information that matters to them with easy-to-use and innovative products like mobile phones, devices and solutions for imaging, games, media and businesses. Nokia provides equipment, solutions and services for network operators and corporations. www.nokia.com
9. About EPSON
Epson is a global leader in imaging products including printers, projectors and LCDs. With an innovative and creative culture, Epson is dedicated to exceeding the vision and expectations of customers worldwide with products known for their superior quality, functionality, compactness and energy efficiency.
Epson is a network of 85,647 employees in 115 companies around the world, and is proud of its ongoing contributions to the global environment and to the communities in which it is located. Led by the Japan-based Seiko Epson Corp., the Group had consolidated sales of 1479.7 billion yen in fiscal 2004.
