Of Peasants & Basterds

Edel Assanti is pleased to present Vienna-based artist Simon Lehner’s first UK solo exhibition, 'Of Peasants & Basterds'. 

Working across sculpture, painting, film and installation, Lehner’s practice interrogates the relationship between the image-onslaught of the information age and psychic inner life. His research probes algorithm-accelerated echo chambers as they evolve into mainstream social doctrines.

Lehner’s focus on groups that proliferate toxic ideals of hyper-masculinity is a case-study in the weaponisation of images, and the power imbalance between the individual and the technologies that now drive collective consciousness. 'Of Peasants& Basterds' expands Lehner’s inquiry into the role of pictures as instruments of manipulation, beginning with a reference to the history of painting. 

His new series of paintings are made through a unique process developed by the artist: compositions are created using thousands of images aggregated from both his private and collective archives to construct interactive 3D digital spaces populated by avatars. Within these environments, the artist assumes a puppeteer role, limitlessly manipulating his characters and props before translating them into films, animatronic sculptures or paintings. The paintings materialise Lehner’s scenes through a collaboration with an adapted robotic router where the artist’s hand and the machine’s meet. Emblematic of the technological era in which they are made, the sophisticated layering of Lehner’s paintings complicate our ability to distinguish  depth and authorship, real from simulation, truth from falsehood.