DANIEL VON STURMER

EXPERIMENTA: VANISHING POINT
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As a part of Experimenta’s multi-site exhibition Vanishing Point, Gertrude and Experimenta presented two works by Melbourne-based artist Daniel von Sturmer, Screen Test (Sequence 1) and Straw. Confounding our expectations, von Sturmer’s works play with the fundamental laws governing perception and the inertia of objects. In ScreenTest (Sequence 1), within a seemingly static white box, five ordinary objects slided, bounced, and knocked into walls according to an alternative gravity. Projected onto a corner-shaped screen, the deceptive space of this synchronised video environment extended the two-dimensional plane of video into the space of the gallery. Contrasted with the visual illusion of Straw, Screen Test (Sequence 1) played with the camera's ability to manipulate perception, and conflates the malleable, pictorial space of video with the apparently fixed and immutable space of the external world.

Daniel Von Sturmer was born in Auckland, 1972, and currently lives and works in Melbourne. He completed a MA in Fine Arts at RMIT in 1999 and in 2001 was awarded a Samstag Scholarship. His work has been shown widely both in Australia and internationally, including Screen Test, Dunedin Public Gallery, New Zealand, 2004; A Molecular History of Everything*, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2004; and Material From Another Medium, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, 2001. Von Sturmer’s work The Truth Effect was shortlisted for The Walters Prize in 2004, after previously being exhibited in New 03 at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art; On Reason and Emotion, 14th Sydney Biennale, Art Gallery of New South Wales; and Face Up: Contemporary Art from Australia, Nationalgalerie Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin. His work is held in the collections of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, and Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. Daniel Von Sturmer is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne.