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until 14.10. | #3974ARTatBerlin | FeldbuschWiesnerRudolph (FWR) presents from 9. September 2023 the exhibition “The Artwork of the Future (Cycle II)” by the Berlin multimedia artis Dennis Rudolph.
“(…) The real work of art, i.e. the directly sensually represented, in the moment of its most bodily appearance, is the liberation of thought in sensuality, the satisfaction of the need of life in life. (…)” (Richard Wagner, The Work of Art of the Future, 1849)
The staging of a unique fusion of traditional media and digital technologies will take place in the gallery’s spacious rooms. The audience is invited to enter a utopian world through the classic panel painting.
At the center of the exhibition is the work titled “Frieze of the Gods II (Rise of Eurydice / Fall of Rome)” (2023). At first glance, it is an 8m-long canvas on whose surface a superficially abstract weave of broad brushstrokes is depicted. The brushstrokes are sometimes longer, sometimes shorter but always powerfully drawn and remain monochrome in their singular color trajectories. Slightly curved, they seem to follow the contour of an invisible logical form. The artist has applied the oil paint in a strikingly impasto manner, and so this painting resembles a tactile relief. The heavy scent of the paint wafts into the exhibition space, beguiling not only the visual but also the olfactory senses. Everything in and about this panorama of painting grabs the real senses of the exhibition visitor with an irresistible attractiveness and its vehement flow.
And yet, between these “land zones” of impasto paint stand the lucid surfaces of an atmospheric blue. These “voids” seem like small windows that offer a view of the endless firmament of the sky. The association with the ceiling paintings of baroque churches is awakened. In fact – as Dennis Rudolph describes it – the artist got his inspiration from the “standard sky in Unity software, a gaming engine that I use to build my apps for extending my painting into VR, virtual reality” (DR).
For it is originally the painting in virtual reality, which has changed in a refreshing way the stylistic instruments, how Dennis Rudolph paints “in real life” or described at the beginning with brush and oil paint on canvas. The current technological conditions that man has created for the existence and experience of art are also changing art itself. Thus, painting in virtual reality – on the border between presence and absence – is one of the central dichotomies in the work of Dennis Rudolph.
In his search for ways to give the digital brushstrokes back their materiality and bring them over to “our side” of reality, Rudolph has begun painting sections of his virtual works in a thick impasto technique with oil paint on canvas. Using an augmented reality app he developed, which visitors download onto their smartphones, the digitally painted figures in augmented reality emerge from the paintings at the exact points where Rudolph painted sections in oil. At this moment, the painting loses its abstraction and we realize that the physical painting is part of a larger visual digital world. In Dennis Rudolph’s “Frieze of the Gods II,” the immaterial messengers of Greek mythology perform a dramatic choreography. And because, according to the artist, “anything (is) possible in the vitual world,” Eurydice also succeeds in her ascent, which would have been denied her due to the failure of her lover Orpheus, leaving her eternally trapped in the underworld….
The entrance to the gallery offers a glimpse into the artist’s digital workshop. Here Dennis Rudolph has his technical assistant, the 3D printer, create the next model for his new bronze head edition. And the exhibition visitor can observe its generative emergence, growth, layer by layer over the weeks of the exhibition…. In the end, a bronze head will be at the center of the exhibition, testifying in the claim of the monument to an eternal memory of the transfer of the digital into the traditional media.
Together with music composed for the works (by Dietrich Brüggemann), Dennis Rudolph’s works appeal to all our senses, creating an immersive, multi-sensory experience in which oil painting, digital painting, sculpture, architecture and music combine to create a Wagner-meets-Hollywood Gesamtkunstwerk. “Of course, only for those who own a smartphone. But that applies to pretty much everyone. We are, after all, already all cyborgs.” (DR)
Opening: Saturday, 9. September 2023, 6:00 to 9:00 pm
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 9.September 2023 to Saturday, 14. October 2023
To the Gallery
Image caption: Dennis Rudolph, Götterfries II (Aufstieg der Eurydike / Fall of Rome), 2023 Oil on canvas+ AR App, 800x220cm, Music: Dietrich Brüggemann
Exhibition Dennis Rudloph – FeldbuschWiesnerRudolph | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
