Inventory
The work ’Inventory’ challenges the viewer to see differently. While the artwork is made with a minimalist approach, using white surfaces and texts, the readings open up a hued scenery. AI-generated descriptions replace actual works from the artist’s portfolio. While reading the text, the viewer automatically imagines a visual setting. The descriptions contain or evoke colours that lead the imagination to a particular part of the colour wheel. The blocks are arranged on the wall in colour order, creating an imaginary gradient, that we could see if we could read them simultaneously, not just sequentially. But human perception is not used to this. This is where the power of images lies because when we look at several images in the same space, they begin to communicate with each other and form a new meaning. As Aby Warburg points out with his Mnemosyne Atlas, one image can be explained even if it takes many pages, but the interrelationship of images cannot be described in any other way.
While we face the increasing dominance of images, there is another attempt that digitality favours: to describe everything. The digital space is language-centric. Some AI algorithm labels and categorises every single image to make it searchable and understandable. Content becomes legible, colour becomes code. At the same time, there is a growing urge to comment on what has happened, to narrate what we see and to label what we have. Twenty years ago, Gottfried Boehm warned that „if one overemphasises the importance of the text behind the image, one will inevitably come up against the dominance of language, which literally ‘sees through’ the possibilities of the image”. We seem to overlook images. Like the algorithm, we consume tons of images without really seeing them, automatically converting them into feelings and meanings. Can we regain our sensitivity, let the visual signs work and let them unfold before our eyes? Does visual art still have some tools to reverse this process?
Has been shown at:
A tree without leaves
Inventory
Installation
(plaster cast, metal wall bracket, plywood board)
350 x 500 x 30 cm
2024