Jurgen Trautwein is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the unpredictability of the next thought, while exercising being.

1997 founding of jtwine.com
1990 Masters @ University of the Arts (HDK), Berlin
1984-90 University of the Arts (HDK), Berlin
active exhibition record since 1987
1958 born in Bruchsal, Germany
lives and works in San Francisco

selected exhibitions
2007 Breakthrough, SF artcommision gallery
2006 Artists Space, night of thousand drawings, New York
2006 Artconcept festival @the manhattan club, Saint Petersburg
2006 Nova Art fair/Bucheon Gallery, Chicago
2005 Artists Space, night of thousand drawings, New York
2005 Ephemeral Cities, Deptford X festival, London
2005 Bayennale, Bay area international arts festival, San Francisco
2005 New media arts festival, Bangkok
2005 Margit Haupt Galerie (the sleep of reason), Karlsruhe (solo show)
2004 Patriot acts: Art and free expression,
California Lawyers for the Arts, San Francisco
2004 Berkeley Art Center (war peace and civil liberties), Berkeley
2004 The Lab Gallery (field of vision), New York
2004 coded cultures (NIESATT parallel worlds),Vienna
2004 NIESATT on the net, Feature and review @ furtherfield.org, London
2004 RRF 2004 (violence channel) www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004
2003 Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts (9th Art on the Net,"anti violence"), as part of the wartime project, Tokyo
2003 The Lab, (post postcard 7), San Francisco
2003 javamuseum.org(Perspectives ‘03),Cologne2003
Denise Bibro Fine Art Inc., New York
2003 The Rat Pack Lounge, (NIESATT), Berlin (solo show)
2003 G2 Gallery, Scottsdale
2003 University galleries of Illinois State, (Ready for war), Normal
2003 The Irish Museum of Modern Art (net art open), Dublin
2003 furtherfield.org ,power and jtwine, London
2002 Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts
(Art on the net 2002 "9.11."), Tokyo
2002 12-12:Time based web cast, school of design ,Cardiff
2002 The Irish Museum of Modern Art (net art open), Dublin
2002 Korean cultural center( parallel connections), Los Angeles
2001 Jan Baum Gallery (Narragonia), Los Angeles (solo show)
2001 Net_Working @ Watershed Media Center, Bristol
2001 Micromuseum - Medi@terra , Athens, Lavrion
2001 Net Art Guide, Fraunhofer E-Business, Stuttgart
2001 Place Pigalle (living by numbers),
San Francisco (solo show)
2001 The… Gallery (the post biological plenitude of ultimate emptiness), Hollywood (solo show)

Review

Caught between sleek animation and superb graphic seduction, JTwine’s net-based work ‘NIESATT’ is alive with visual and emotional charge.

‘I was dropped into the corporate world when I was 20 and I was disgusted by it. To express my unhappy situation I start literally to draw myself out of it. Power structures, technology and human relations became a Leitmotif in my work.’ – JTwine.

The issues JTwine grapples with are consumption, overload and pseudo- information. The work has an intelligence that is not pontificating to make one feel uncomfortable. Arresting one’s imagination with the pace of animated graphics, the issues that belie NIESATT-PARALLEL WORLDS present themselves in short statements and sketches. And yet, the visual presentation and narrative structure, which slyly glide between advertising, web-graphic and simulated game styles, is unique enough to open the viewer to questions rather than being a dumb receptor. His stance keeps the questions in areas of exploration, seeking solutions, a space that is open-ended. In an interview, he says ‘I’m interested in truth not beauty. Distortion or essentialisation might be necessary to create a true image to reveal visions of the human drama on the battlefield of reality in our commercialized and machine dependent world.’

JTwine’s website, PHA GREYLAND has a number of such diaryistic logs that locate him well enough for us to feel we know him.

JTwine is a net-scribbler, fusing his sketches, observations, and videos into a mini-world with attributes of his sensations – visually audible noise. The site is constantly unfolding, click by click, revealing layer upon layer of involvement and introspection on issues of power structures, technology and human relations. In NIESATT, the notion of ‘parallel worlds’ translates into dividing every inch of the screen into slithers of multi-layered, scrolling, exploding, animated, visual, wordy, flash, gifs; the website seems unlimited and unbound by time and space constraints. One can get lost in it – but never feel at a dead end for all the links, tunnel and merge into the world of JTwine.

Then again, we may question what draws one into this net-based work? What is it that compels us to explore it? I’d say it’s the sheer pleasure of the unexpected image, the artistic ‘time travel’, and the visceral hand-drawn sketch with its dynamic high voltage 2D screen avatar, which makes space for the throbbing vibrancy of the site.

Maybe this is the equivalent of submersive emotional intelligence on the net.

Darshana Vora

Website: NIESATT parallel worlds
Contact email: jtwine@jtwine.com

KekeTop Art Project. Art around the Cock.

Website: KekeTop Art Project
Contact email: keketop@jippii.fi