Bernd Jansons Artist Bernd was born in Zeven, Germany in 1948, but he has lived most of his life in Australia, having immigrated with his parents from war-ravaged Europe in 1950. He currently lives in Leura, nestled in the midst of a world heritage park in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. He has degrees in Computer Science and in Arts and, during his life so far he has been a public servant, a computer programmer, a systems analyst, a manager, a consultant, an academic, an actor, a lighting designer and a theatrical director, among other things. Until recently, he lectured in computer science and interface design at the University of Western Sydney. He has now left academia to devote himself full-time to his art.Although being involved in drawing and amateur photography for many years, Bernd turned to digital art at the beginning of 2007. Since then, he has been successful in securing both solo and group exhibitions in the Blue Mountains, Wollongong, Sydney and Melbourne. Currently, he also has works hanging in the forecourt of the NSW Parliament House and the former Chancellery at the University of Western Sydney. He is a member of the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) and the Blue Mountains Artists Company, as well as several ancillary artists’ groups. The primary focus of Bernd's work is the image itself and its ability to carry meaning through basic elements of form, texture and colour. In earlier work involving visual communication and design, Bernd became aware of the tenuous and arbitrary links between visual stimulus and perception, sign and signified, form and meaning. A keen devotee of Gestalt, he attempts to push an image to the edge of cognition where meaning becomes essentially volatile and totally personal and subjective. He sometimes likens this to the concept of the event-horizon of a black hole in space; the point beyond which meaning cannot escape. A direct result of this is that much, if not most of his work is abstract to some extent in a bid to free interpretation and meaning from automated response. The second major driving force behind Bernd's work is his determination to see digital "painting" join the other, more traditional, media forms in the pantheon of fine arts. Much has already been written about the digital arts and most of this discourse unfortunately dwells on technology and technique, rather than the merits of the artwork as a vehicle of communication and an aesthetic object. Bernd strongly believes how an artist creates an artwork is ultimately irrevelent;  whether it be with a burnt stick, pig's bristles dipped in pigments, a stray can, or a computer mouse or graphics tablet. What should be judged is the artefact itself, not how it was produced. The battle continues.

And Now For Something Completely Different

1 February 2008 to 8 February 2008. Form, texture and colour. Stimulus and perception. Meaning. Art as a visual language. And now for something completely different. The image in its own right … for its own sake … as stimulus … as perceived narratives shifting from moment to moment, from person to person. The ‘event-horizon’ of a black hole in space is the precise point beyond which light and information cannot escape to the rest of the world. It is the edge of meaning. In his work, Bernd attempts to take the image to the edge of meaning … to the event-horizon of perception. All meaning is subjective, derived from cognitive processes driven by sensory stimulus. Meaning can be transferred through communication, carried by language where elementary tokens are packed and unpacked according to agreed protocols. Sign and signified become linked momentarily and arbitrarily as perception grapples with stimulus. Relieved of the need to define function, form together with texture and colour are freed to seductively invoke non-functional meaning. The image, although it may borrow pragmatically and contextually, exists  as an artefact and as a vehicle for the transfer of meaning beyond discourse of technique, genre, style, subject, technology, media and everything else outside itself. This exhibition celebrates the image at the edge … at the event-horizon.