Pareidolia is taken from the Greek term para (next to or against) and eidolon (image or form) and describes a human specific characteristic of trying to recognize faces, familiar beings or objects in everyday things and patterns. That’s why people recognize various shapes in clouds. An actual object is augmented with a non-existent one, as our brains are trained to re-recognize things in order to process all the impressions that come our way all the day. Julian Heuser takes up this neural strategy in his artworks. By photographing his paintings and drawings, processing and editing them on the computer and finally printing them, he intervenes the permanent flood of images and develops them further in his own way. Control over brushstrokes and resolute digital commands are as important as calculated coincidences in the printing process. The focus is not just on the picture itself, but more on the idea of anlogue painting and digital processing coexisting on a surface defined by Heuser. Boundaries of real and maybe fictious (because dematerialized) digital brushstrokes mix up and also determine each other, which makes presenting on canvas or paper consequent.

(Text: Katharina Baumecker, Translation: Christian Zwerschina)