Torben Giehler
In the monumental painting Circling Overland (2002), German artist Torben Giehler transforms a gridded landscape with an overhead view of diagonal bands and aligned color blocks, which recede towards a far horizon. The painting is titled after a song by the Belgian electronic music group Front 242, and is part of a series in which hand-drawn sketches were edited digitally and later scaled to massive paintings with vibrant colors. On close inspection, Giehler's use of a transparent acrylic paint creates a layered effect that upends traditional hard edge painting in which all compositional layers unite across a flattened pictorial plane.