__drawings

Threshold of Complexity

For the exhibition Sleep! at Kunsthal KAdE, Harm van den Berg created a large drawing installation—an elongated drawn network on panels with a total length of seven meters. For this artwork, he developed a special technique in which, using a needle, he meticulously removes black paint from the surface, revealing a delicate white web.

The title of the work, Threshold of Complexity, refers to the point at which components in a network reach a certain level of organization, resulting in the spontaneous emergence of new properties. This phenomenon can be seen in ants, which as a colony build ingenious structures, in birds that form unique shapes in the air as a flock, or in the human brain, where consciousness and emotions arise from the highly complex neural network.

Van den Berg's intricate, network-like drawings are created in a similar way. During the drawing process, new forms spontaneously emerge by repeatedly making minute graphic marks. For the artist, this is a way to visualize the dynamics of complex organizational processes that often lie hidden beneath the surface of reality.

Within the context of the exhibition's theme of sleep, the deep black background of Threshold of Complexity can be seen as the sleep state, while the white drawn networks evoke associations with brain processes during various sleep stages. In this way, the installation can be read as a representation of the complexity and imaginative power of the human mind during sleep.

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