{article by Enrico Pitozzi via Digicult, featured image Herman Kolgen – Inject (2010) – Photo by Herman Kolgen}
Among the interesting figures of the artistic panorama, Herman Kolgen lives in Montreal (Quebec, Canada). Audiokinetic sculptor, he works starting from the relationship between sound and image creating, from their divergence, works presented as installations, performances, sound sculptures, videos and cinematographic works – for example Silent Room (2005), film, installation and live performance created with the collaboration of the video artist and photographer Dominique [t] Skoltz with whom he founded in 1996 the multi-discipline cell Skoltz_Kolgen (followed by DigiMag several times in the past).
Since 2008 Herman Kolgen has inaugurated an individual path of radical interrogations about audiovisual systems. His versatile work is characterized by an approach that we could define “radiographic” towards audio and visual material, in which the dimensions of the invisible and inaudible take its’ form by manifesting itself to the spectators sight. Attracted by the organic dimension, Herman Kolgen is inspired by the internal tension that lives the matter (tras)formation; this process brings him to create works where at the center the notion of time is placed.
Combined and associated with the digital, through an extremely sensitive job, the organic dimension is converged towards the presence of hybrid forms. His interventions integrate, also, radical work of audio spatialization, in which the physical space of the room, its’ volume, becomes pulsation geometry. His creations, in particular the project Inject (2009-2010), the recent one Dust (2010) and the installations called Stochastic Process (2010) and Water Musik (2010), are presented in various galleries and in the main electronic art festivals in Europe, America and Asia.
Enrico Pitozzi: Your work is an interesting example of integration between the image and sound. Could you explain more closely the method of integration used, by referring to your work as a whole, between these two dimensions?
Herman Kolgen: I have been preoccupied with this integration for a long time. As a young 12 year old, I used to play the drums whilst also displaying my first visual works in the town where I grew up. It was only later, around 18 years of age, that I started asking myself which direction I should go in, developing one art to its fullest. However I could never, for a long time, decide which course to take, or devote myself entirely to one art rather than another.
Sagama Publishing 