Erik Sanner

Erik Sanner is a new media artist living and working in New York City. He began exhibiting in Tokyo in the late nineties, where he was given his first solo show in 1998. His education comes primarily from visiting museums around the globe.

Sanner integrates traditional media with contemporary methods of creative production to create dynamic installations he calls “paintings that move.” Using computer processing to constantly recompose and recombine video footage and computer graphics, he projects dynamic video onto prepared surfaces such as oil paintings. Each “moving painting” is constantly changing, providing the viewer with a unique experience every time it is viewed.

Sanner was awarded a Manhattan Community Arts Fund (MCAF) grant in 2007 for his public art project “Chess,” in which he invited park-goers to invent rules and paint together on chess boards. The resulting footage was manipulated and projected in a variety of configurations onto super-sized chess boards throughout Manhattan. He was awarded a second MCAF grant in 2009 for “How to Enjoy Traffic Cones” – a diverse exhibition of work by several artists treating traffic cones as aesthetic phenomena.

In addition to utilizing technology, Sanner frequently works with other artists, finding that collaborating on projects leads to outcomes neither individual would have anticipated. Recent collaborators include judsoN, Lisa Kellner, James Merrell, and Kazue Taguchi.

Tangential to his studio practice, Sanner co-founded the APE (Aesthetic Purposes Exploration) discussion group, which meets four times a year to confront the question “What is the function of art?” He also maintains a personal blog sharing his creative process.

Sanner’s overarching goal in all his work is to expand our experience of painting by utilizing technology.