About — Oliver Andermatt

About
Oliver Andermatt

Artist Statement

I explore the beauty of imperfection by rendering the present into a future noir lo-fi-industrial conception—drawn by the inspiration from the avant-garde, cyberpunk, dark electronic music and 1980s computer and VHS imagery.

Furthermore, I aim for an unusual perspective in photographic composition of architecture, technology, urbanism and vast landscapes while restricting myself to my smartphone.

My post-processing focuses on glitch art: the practice of creating analogue or digital errors by manipulating electronic devices or corrupting digital data. I achieve these effects with Adobe Photoshop. Each image is manipulated individually in order to obtain a unique look, but at the same time to maintain its original character.

Creating images of distortion—my work stands for a silent warning.

‘A war of technology
Threatens to ignite
Digital murder
The language of machines’

Leeb Bill / Fulber Rhys. Mindphaser. Front Line Assembly.
© 1992 by Third Mind Records. CD.

Biography

His dad introduced him to ‘the future’.

Oliver Andermatt feels lucky to have been growing up during the 1980s when all the exciting consumer electronics swept the markets. Oliver got his first home computer, a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, from his dad at the age of ten.
Instantly hooked, he spent a lot of time on the computer besides of getting in all sorts of trouble young boys usually do.

A few years later, Oliver’s fascination for computer graphics was triggered after receiving a Commodore Amiga 500 which featured outstanding graphic capabilities.
On a rainy summer holiday he spent so much time creating graphics, that the raster lines of the monitor had ‘burnt’ themselves onto his retina for a few days.
Nevertheless, this lay the foundation for Oliver to pursue an apprenticeship as a typographer and a continued education as a multimedia producer which eventually led up to a career in the web design industry entailing visual design, front-end development and content management.

In the early 2000s Oliver poured himself into the uprising web design industry while working at a large newspaper for many years.
During that time, he got interested in digital photography after the introduction of the first entry-level digital single-lens reflex camera, Canon EOS 300D.

Today, Oliver combines photography and visual design and thus started working on image creation during the first half of the 2010s, inspired by the avant-garde, cyberpunk, dark electronic music and 1980s computer and VHS imagery.

He began publishing his work on Instagram to reach a worldwide audience and was excited to discover, upon others, like-minded individuals.

As a minimalist, Oliver has reduced his material possessions, digital distractions and everyday clutter down to the essentials in order to live a simple, fulfilling and meaningful life—and as a Stoic he finds happiness by focusing on what’s important to him.

‘We all turn to dust
On heaven’s command
Time moves by fast
No second chance’