Eliana Willis

“Hidden Faces: Covered Portraits of the Renaissance,” a new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will be the first ever to showcase the history of a peculiar and little-known practice of Renaissance painting: multi-sided portraits which veiled the identity of a portrait’s subject, using three-dimensional elements such as panels, hinges, and secret codes.
Bernhard Strigel, Portrait of Margarethe Vöhlin (recto); Coat of Arms (verso) (1527). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Ralph and Mary Booth Collection. Photo: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Multi-sided portraits developed in Italy and parts of Northern Europe throughout the 15th and 16th centuries. The works represent some of the most technically innovative secular works of the Renaissance. This exhibition aims to challenge the traditional understanding and viewership of portraiture from the era by showcasing almost 60 artistic works by the likes of Titian, Lucas Cranach, and Lorenzo Lotto. These include boxes, lockets, and other objects which were originally created as a pair, such as portraits and their covers, which are now being reunited after a prolonged separation across different private or museum collections. Some of these paintings were intended as mobile pieces of propaganda, while others were designed to obscure a lover’s identity.
Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait Cover with an Allegory of Chastity (ca. 1505). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Samuel H. Kress Collection. Photo: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.
One example is the early-15th century Portrait of Giovanna de’ Rossi (ca. 1505) by Italian painter Lorenzo Lotto. The portrait of the lady was shielded by a sliding panel, which itself depicted a scene of a dark wood, with drunken, lewd satyrs lurking behind trees, and leering over a gleaming female figure draped in gold and white. She is radiating purity as a cherub sprinkles dust upon her from above. This allegory of chastity gives the viewer a perspective into either the character of the lady in the portrait, revealed once the cover is slid over, or into the relationship between artist and subject.
Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Giovanna de’ Rossi (ca. 1505). Musee des Beaux Arts, Dijon Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.
Other paintings were double-sided, such as Netherlandish portraitist Hans Memling’s late-15th century Portrait of a Man. The front side, or recto, depicts the portrait itself while the painting’s reverse side, or verso, depicts one of Europe’s earliest independent still lifes.
Hans Memling, Portrait of a Man (recto); Still Life with a Jug of Flowers (verso) (ca. 1485). Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. Photo: © Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. Madrid.
The artworks include loans from European and other American institutions, such as the Ashmolean Museum, Gallerie defli Uffizi, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, and National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Bernhard Strigel, Portrait of Margarethe Vöhlin (recto); Coat of Arms (verso) (1527). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Ralph and Mary Booth Collection. Photo: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.
“Hidden Faces: Covered Portraits of the Renaissance“ is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 5th Ave, New York, through July 7. 
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A new exhibition opening at Galerie Canesso will highlight the contested origins of blue jeans, with the display of 17th-century paintings that appear to depict the fabric. Levi Strauss is often credited with creating the sartorial staple in California 150 years ago, though France and Italy have made their own claims. But 10 early artworks featuring blue jeans complicate the narrative.
In 2004, curator Gerlinde Gruber reattributed these works to an unknown artist dubbed the Master of the Blue Jeans. By 2010, the Italian dealer Maurizio Canesso had bought up all of the mysterious painter’s works. Two will appear in his gallery’s 30th anniversary show, taking place in Paris (May 16—June 23) and Milan (May 23—June 23), but only one of them, Woman Begging with Two Children, will be for sale.
Since Galerie Canesso’s last exhibition in 2010, which presented the full-known oeuvre of the Master of the Blue Jeans, the dealer has located one additional example, which he bought in Buenos Aires.
The original 10 paintings by the Master have always been traced to Northern Italy during the 17th century, but were previously attributed to Michael Sweerts, Diego Velásquez, and Georges de Latour. While they are all early genre scenes centered on society’s poorest people, most feature flashes of prototypical jeans crafted from blue cloth and white thread.
Master of the Blue Jeans, A Woman Begging with Two Children (ca. 17th century). Photo: Galerie Canesso
“People are still not very familiar with the true history of blue jeans, as they confuse it with the material made by Levi Strauss,” Canesso told Artnet News. “One has to distinguish between blue jeans and denim: jeans come from Genoa, while denim comes from the French city of Nîmes.” The Italian specimens were woven with perpendicular stitches, while their French kin were woven in chevron patterns.
“An amazing thing is that until the 11th century, no one could wear blue fabric because they didn’t know how to make blue color adhere to the fabric,” Canesso continued. “Only in the year 1000 did this begin to happen using woad leaves, and at a very high cost. The genius of the Genoese was to find the indigo stone in India and make this an industrial and therefore low-cost process.”
Master of the Blue Jeans, Beggar Boy (ca. 17th century). Photo: Galerie Canesso
Historians had been aware of works by the Master of the Blue Jeans for decades before Gruber’s re-identification. Belgian architect Paul Eeckhout wrote about the 10 paintings in 1960s. They also appeared in a 1998 exhibition of Lombard and Venetian artists in Grenoble. Gerlinde reattributed the works based on their fascination with fabric, as well as the reappearance of figures like the young protagonist in Beggar Boy.
Genre painting flourished in the century that followed, but these works stand out. “The Master of the Blue Jeans is the only one who painted jeans,” Canesso wrote. “These paintings are the story of a family: they are always the same characters, wearing the same clothes—clothes that they used every day. And they are true jeans fabric: when it tears, the white thread comes out.”
This feature is especially visible in A Woman Sewing With Two Children—another work by the Master of the Blue Jeans set to go on view at Galerie Canesso. It will be on loan (like most works in the anniversary show) from the collector that Canesso originally sold it to.
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Viewers could be forgiven for losing track of time lingering in front of one of Katie Hector’s paintings, induced into something akin to reverie or reminiscence through their mesmeric ranges of color optically advancing and receding. Hector, an artist based outside of Los Angeles, employs a unique method of painting to create her spellbinding portraits—unique namely in that it doesn’t involve paint, in the traditional sense, at all. Instead, she uses bleach and dyes to create her compositions, a technique born out of experimentation in the studio during the pandemic.
“It was mid-pandemic, which afforded me the solitude to tweak the process,” Hector said via email. “Applying layers and introducing moments of erasure makes each painting feel alive and allows me to have a different conversation with the physical canvas as well as the image.”
Installation view of “Katie Hector: Ego Rip” (2024). Courtesy of Management, New York.
In her solo exhibition “Ego Rip” at Management in New York, on view through May 12, Hector’s refinement of this technical process reaches dazzling heights and clarity. At first the figures appear almost chrome, but with closer inspection recall alternate ways of seeing, like infrared, x-ray, or thermal imaging. Despite the visual gratification of the vibrant figuration, however, the show carries a heavy emotional weight throughout; a sense of loss, grief, and nostalgia is pervasive, and speaks to the core themes of the show.
Katie Hector, Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as raven claws (2024). Courtesy of the artist and Management, New York.
In the diptych Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as raven’s claws (2024), featuring two figures oriented towards each other, foreheads just touching, the strength of the work lies in its ability to carry multiple readings simultaneously. It could be seen as the psychological self meeting its counterpart, id and superego, partners or friends or family members in a shared emotional moment. Each of Hector’s paintings manage to hold room for what the viewer brings to it, an effect of her process.
Katie Hector, Riley (2024). Courtesy of the artist and Management, New York.
Each portrait, or rather “portrait,” is an amalgamation of references, from casual screenshots off social media to well-researched photographs. The result for the viewer is a feeling of hazy recognition like you might remember whom you are reminded of if you keep looking a moment longer.
“I try to walk each portrait away from a conveyance of individuality and like it best when a finished work has many different points of access. That’s my hope for this body of work,” the artist explains. “I’m trying to open up portraiture and question if something akin to me can also feel familiar to you. Could a portrait of someone I know also feel like your sister, friend, aunt, or classmate? Can it activate your own story in your mind?”
Katie Hector, Dead Head I (2024). Courtesy of the artist and Management, New York.
While the paintings in “Ego Rip” predominantly feature figures, two small-scale paintings operate as proverbial bookends, Dead Head I and Dead Head II (both 2024). Evoking the tradition of memento mori, both feature skulls; one hangs by the door and the other is tucked into a corner on the opposite side of the gallery space. Together these paintings act as cogent and poignant reminders that death is not simply a metaphor, but something we carry, a lens through which we catch glimpses of our own material being.

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A newly discovered and restored work by Italian Baroque master Caravaggio will soon go on view at Milan’s Prado Museum, in the same city where it was identified as a signature work by the artist. Ecce Homo (1605–09), is one of only about 60 known works by the artist, and shows Roman governor Pontius Pilate presenting Christ to the people, a scene from the Passion of Christ as recounted in the Gospel of John.
The work had not left Spain for four centuries, having passed through the collections of several high-ranking officials and even King Phillip IV before going to Spanish diplomat Evaristo Pérez de Castro Méndez in 1821; it has remained with his descendants ever since. It will go on view from May 28 through October.
Ecce Homo had been offered for sale for a pittance as the work of another artist. It was scheduled to go to auction in April 2021 at Madrid’s Ansorena auction house, at which time it was attributed to a follower of Spanish artist José de Ribera (himself an admirer of Caravaggio) and bore a reserve price of just €1,500 ($1,780). But experts at the Prado Museum placed an export ban on the work, saying that there was “sufficient stylistic and documentary evidence” to suggest it might have been done by Caravaggio himself. 
Caravaggio, Ecce homo (1604-05), during restoration. Courtesy private collection.
Maria Cristina Terzaghi, an associate art history professor and Caravaggio expert at University Roma Tre, immediately booked a plane ticket to Madrid and was among the first to identify it as a signature work by the master, telling El Pais, “It’s a Caravaggio. I have no doubts.” She identified the red of Christ’s robe and the face of Pilate from other Caravaggio works. 
At that time, Italian art historian Vittorio Sgarbi told the Sunday Times that the piece could sell to private collectors for between €100 and €150 million (about $108 million and $162 million) or to the Prado for €40 or €50 million (about $43 million to $54 million).
The painting’s new owner will lend it to the Prado for exhibition; the loan is handled by Colnaghi Gallery (which has locations in London, New York, Brussels, and Madrid). The painting was restored by Andrea Cipriani and his team in collaboration with two London dealers, Filippo Benappi of Benappi Fine Art and Andrea Lullo of Lullo Pampoulides gallery.
The painting’s provenance will also get the documentary film treatment. Madrid producer Morena Films is teaming up with Estrategia Audiovisual and Italian entertainment company Fandango to create The Sleeper, a “thriller doc” to be produced and directed by Álvaro Longoria. It started production at the end of 2023, reported Variety, with the guidance of Colnaghi CEO Jorge Coll.
“You can’t ask for a better thriller plot,” Longoria told Variety. “The world of art is fascinating and somewhat obscure. The variables that affect the artistic versus economic value of a painting are plenty and this has always fascinated me.”  
In an accompanying catalogue, four experts make the case for the painting as an authentic piece by the master: along with Terzaghi, there’s art historian Gianni Papi, University of Naples art history professor Giuseppe Porzio, and Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Kieth Christiansen.
“The Prado played an important role in the recovery of this work by alerting the Ministry of Culture of its importance, which prevented its departure from Spain,” said Miguel Falomir, director of the Prado. “Thanks to the generosity of its current owner, the Prado now makes an exceptional work by one of the greatest painters in history available to the public and the scientific community.”
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Petrit Halilaj, a Kosovar artist born in the former Yugoslavia, has unveiled a major installation in the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City inspired by his childhood in Balkan country. The installation, Abetare (2024), borrows its name from the book Halilaj and his peers used to learn the alphabet in school. The work—his first major piece in the United States—was conceived by the artist in consultation with curator Iria Candela.
Petrit Halilaj, Abetare (2024) on view at the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Photo by Adam Schrader.
Halilaj was raised in the small Kosovar village of Runik before he was displaced by the Kosovo War in the late 1990s as Serbians sought to expel ethnic Albanians from the land. At 13 years old, he was sent to a refugee camp called Kukas where his family survived the war. The phrase “Return to Kukas” appears in part of the installation.
The artist, now based in Berlin, was inspired by the doodles of children he saw on desks while visiting his former school in Runik, which, in 2010, was in the process of being demolished after surviving the war. “We are a very small village, and that school was one of the few architectural landmarks that survived the war,” Halilaj recalled during a press preview on April 29.
Petrit Halilaj, Abetare (2024) on view at the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Photo by Adam Schrader.
Halilaj said he didn’t understand why the town was happy to tear it down and build a new school, even if it came with fewer “holes and traces of war.” But while on a quick stop to take a picture for posterity, he saw a band of kids playing in the school’s garden. The children pointed him to desks that had been thrown out—to look at drawings on them.
“These desks were from the ‘70s, years I was not yet born. They have seen the fall of Yugoslavia, all the conflicts of the ‘90s, all the segregation, all the war. They still survived. All those generations of kids were all coexisting in a very beautiful mix with each other,” he said.
Petrit Halilaj, Abetare (2024) on view at the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Photo by Adam Schrader.
He said he loved seeing the symbols of United Nations peacekeepers juxtaposed with the name of the Argentinian soccer star Lionel Messi. He called the drawings “moments of freedom and expression” for the children who made them.
In his work, Halilaj has rendered details in the sculptures that include the famous “Super S” that children often draw in their notebooks, as well as a rendering of Batman, a penis, the word “tiddies,” and the phrase “2+2=5”—a symbol of dystopian groupthink from George Orwell’s 1984.
Detail of Petrit Halilaj, Abetare (2024) on view at the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Photo by Adam Schrader.
The works also have references to pop culture, including flowers inspired by those painted by Andy Warhol and references to fellow creative Dua Lipa, the Albanian singer who lived in Pristina with her family after Kosovo declared independence in 2008.
Candela said Halilaj also spent time visiting other schools across the Balkans for research—photographing children’s desks and creating an inventory of the drawings on them. “He organized them by subject, like hearts or sexual elements or reference to history or houses, and he made a huge catalogue of them across the Balkan region,” she said.
Iria Candela in front of sculptures by Kosovar artist Petrit Halilaj installed in the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Photo by Adam Schrader.
In the studio, he decided which drawings he would select and enlarged them to scale then worked with a scale model of the Met’s rooftop garden to orchestrate the placement of the installation’s elements. Candela said all the drawings come directly from the sources they were taken from and that Halilaj did not add or change their designs other than transforming their material and enlarging them.
“The large spider has a couple of legs out of the planters, so you don’t know if the spider is trying to escape or it’s coming in from the park,” Candela said. She emphasized that she also enjoyed the contrast of the dark contours of the sculpture against the white sky of the foggy day of the interview.
Abetare, she added, follows another outdoor commission in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, in which Halilaj installed five stars on the rooftop of a former five-star hotel—now abandoned—that was used as a prison and torture chamber by Serbian forces who took over it when they invaded Kosovo.
Petrit Halilaj, Abetare (2024) on view at the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Photo by Adam Schrader.
“Petrit is, among our Met staff, our most favorite and beloved artist and he won all competitions of who we want to work with,” Max Hollein, the CEO and director of the Met, said as the installation was unveiled. “We love the excitement, the energy, the imagination, and artistic ambition. Petrit’s work is also of course deeply rooted in areas the museum engages with in many way—history, homeland, and migration.”
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When he lived in New York in the 1960s, William John Kennedy may have made his living as an advertising and commercial photographer, but he also had a fine art practice. A new show highlights yet another dimension of his career: a previously unexhibited trove of photos showing two giants of Pop art, Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana, in unguarded moments in their studios, posing with some of their most recognizable works, and at the openings of New York exhibitions.
Robert Indiana photographed in his studio by William John Kennedy.
Kennedy’s central London residence is now a showcase for his photographs of the artists from 1963 and 1964, when they were both early in careers that would go on to help define contemporary art.
Kennedy (who died in 2021) met Indiana at the opening of the latter’s first New York solo show, and soon began photographing him at his studio in the legendary Coenties Slip neighborhood. Indiana then connected Kennedy with Warhol at the “Americans 1963” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (in which Indiana was included).
Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana, photographed by William John Kennedy.
Kennedy would soon bring his camera to Warhol’s legendary Factory and photograph him and the people around him, including poet Gerard Malanga, “Superstar” Ultra Violet, and writer Taylor Mead. Kennedy had ideas like photographing Warhol standing in a field of flowers with his paintings of the same subject.
Robert Indiana, photographed by William John Kennedy.
Former Warhol Museum director Eric Shiner noted a special quality to the photos of the father of Pop. “The Kennedy photos are perhaps the most intimate portraits of Andy that I have ever seen,” he said. “They capture him at the point of his arrival as a true art star and yet he remains his humble, fun-loving, playful self in each frame. They humanize him in a way that few photos do, and if anything, they add to the mythology of Warhol as the benevolent, happy person that he truly was, and yet is rarely celebrated as.”
Andy Warhol, photographed by William John Kennedy.
One striking photo shows Warhol in his studio, holding up a piece of clear plastic printed with the image of Marilyn Monroe that would come to emblazon some of his most famous works.
Another former Warhol Museum director, Patrick Moore, pointed out the poetic dimension of the photo: “In the image, Warhol stands in the Factory, sunlight flooding through the window, illuminating him as he holds aloft the acetate of Marilyn Monroe that would later make some of his most famous paintings. Here we see Warhol in a new way—young, triumphant, about to conquer the art world through transforming the images of movie stars that were his childhood refuge. We literally see Warhol through his art.”
Robert Indiana, photographed by William John Kennedy.
Kennedy seemed to have a special effect on Warhol, the photographer’s wife Marie told the Guardian in 2022, when some of the photographs were published in a book, William John Kennedy: The Lost Archive.
“Andy, of course, was this strange bird,” she said. “When I was in his company, he was very shy, you had to draw him out. But he was much more relaxed with Bill. Bill came up with all these ideas for pictures—getting Andy to wear paintings like sandwich boards or pose behind the acetate for his Marilyn Monroe screen prints—and Andy always went along with him.” 
Marie Kennedy told the Guardian that during a move from New York to Florida, Kennedy almost threw the photos away. 
Robert Indiana, photographed by William John Kennedy.
A photo of Indiana with his best-known work, Love, which has become one of the world’s most-reproduced artworks, resulted from a call that came in with no notice, the photographer recalls: “He said, ‘Bill, come on down I want to show you something.’ So I went down to the studio and there he was, holding his Love painting.”
“When I look back on my involvement with the Pop artists, it all came off my initial involvement with Robert Indiana,” said Kennedy. “He was the linchpin.”
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Although tarot and art have flirted over the past few centuries, a new show opening in Copenhagen on May 3 unveils their all-out affair. Danish artist Rose Eken has curated “The Fool’s Journey” for Eighteen Gallery in the Danish city. Some 22 artists of many backgrounds and bents encapsulated whichever one of the tarot’s Major Arcana cards Eken pulled for them. The curator herself drew the highly misunderstood Death.
Eken’s relationship with tarot “began with my interest and study of the female artists connected to the surrealist movement; such as Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, or Ithell Colquhoun,” she said, “who all have worked a lot with the symbolism of tarot or even made their own tarot decks.”
Rose Eken, Death (2024). Black mirror and glazed ceramic. Photo: Eighteen Gallery
Interest in divination is exploding as global uncertainty intensifies, yet few fine artists—save for Hilma’s Ghost—have dared yet to design their own deck. “The Fool’s Journey” took shape years ago, as Eken and artist Albin Werle (also in the show) played with taking on the project themselves. They soon realized, as Eken recalled, that “even daring to attempt to render all 78 cards could take a lifetime!”
Frederik Exner, The Devil (2024). Photo: Eighteen Gallery.
Instead, Eken focused on the most iconic cards—tarot’s Major Arcana, which begins with the Fool (symbolizing a fresh start and total innocence), and ends with the World (symbolizing completion). Each of the 20 sequential archetypes in between illustrate “the fool’s journey,” or the character’s ascension from naivety to knowing. Eken asked her gallery of 10 years whether it would let her host the show to accommodate the “tight white cube hang” she envisioned. Then, she amassed 21 artists and pulled cards to determine their assignments.
Nina Harman, Justice (2024) Encaustic medium, pigment and inkjet print on wood panel. Photo: Eighteen Gallery
In addition to requesting that all contributions measure ​​around 28 by 18 inches for continuity, Eken also asked her artists for entirely new works. Every single result is surprising, but some are more straightforward. Nina Hartman’s Justice, for example, embodies balance through printed scales and the work’s sculptural, triangular form. Frederik Exner’s mixed-media relief of The Devil features Satan’s throne and perfunctory dark overtones.
Anna Stahn, Strength (Tribute to us all) (2024). Photo: Eighteen Gallery.
By contrast, Anna Stahn’s patinated bronze evokes the minor arcana’s Three of Cups card more than the assignment she actually got, but while “the tarot card of Strength resembles a woman alone with a lion,” Stahn said, “I feel the most strength in groups of friends.” Siri Elfhag’s decision to envision The Magician as an octopus reminds viewers that poltergeists don’t make the tarot function—the cards simply harness semiotics to access a reader’s innate ESP.
And although Caroline Absher was at work finishing her solo booth for the Independent art fair with New York gallery Fredericks & Freiser, she channeled the full rainbow—and what looks like a self-portrait—into The World. “I learned that I enjoy working from a conceptual prompt,” she said. “It helps that The World is one of the most positive and encouraging cards.” Her work will join its cohorts in a tarot book to be made commemorating the show.
“The Fools Journey” will be on view at Eighteen Gallery, Slagtehusgade 18c, 1711 Copenhagen, Denmark, May 3–31. On-site tarot readings will be available to book through the gallery’s website.
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Beyond the sensory overload of the national pavilions in the Giardini della Biennale, there’s another trippy garden in Venice.
This enclave nestled inside a 16th-century church is the brainchild of the Belgian artist Arne Quinze and the U.S. producer, musician, and art collector, Swizz Beatz. Their exhibition titled “Are We The Aliens_” showcases Quinze’s bold exploration into glass, ceramics, and bronze alongside A.I.-generated visuals. At its core is a collaborative sonic installation: an immersive aluminum sanctuary, inviting visitors to recline and absorb its dynamic soundscape.
We caught up with the artist and musician to hear more about their collaboration, marrying sound to art, and taking a leap with the next generation of creators.
Arne Quinze and Swizz Beatz, Sonic Levitation. Photo by Dave Bruel for Arne Quinze. Courtesy of Konig Galerie.
Arne Quinze: We finished installing a half hour ago. The experience is fresh—we just came down from sitting in our garden. Even after making this piece, I’m still discovering. I’m still enjoying. I’m still traveling, I’m still in wonder at what we did.
Swizz Beatz: The collaboration came about because we have a brother in between us but we’ve been a fan of each other’s work for many years.
AQ: The first time I came here was two, three years ago, to check the location, because it’s difficult to find the right location in Venice. After I found it, I started to make the molds and I flew to San Diego and I showed him the model, and we were sitting around the model and talking.
SB: His model, it’s still on the table where he left it. It’s a model of the sculpture that I was looking at while I was doing the music, vibing, listening to music in the speakers and just asking: How would the sound look coming out of the sculpture? How would you feel?
AQ: The concept of the exhibition title “Are We The Aliens_” came up because we have the same view on the world, from the discussions that we had. The theme is actually questioning ourselves. We need to learn to approach again our planet with beauty and with our art and to communicate and to embrace and to live in harmony. That’s the message. Because on this planet, there’s just one race, one species as humans, we are all the same.
Photo by Dave Bruel for Arne Quinze. Courtesy of Konig Galerie.
SB: This is my first, I like to call it sonic installation score, to this amazing sculpture masterpiece. I’m usually scoring for a movie or doing music-production for a song. This was different because the medium was different. The energy is different. His vision is different. So, it was a pure collaboration. I went through it, like, three or four times and then a last time because we’re still learning each other. Usually, if I’m producing something I’m taking the lead, but you know, he’s the main producer as the artist for his vision, I had to kind of like walk side-by-side, see if this works, right? And then eventually I was like, “Okay, we can jibe from here and then we got to a masterful place together.”
AQ: I think we are here to bring beauty and I think through beauty we try to communicate and bring us all back together. When you see a white, flower field, you need to embrace that and to learn to see that again and that will bring the music and the art back into our lives—and that will reunite us. I think this is important.
SB: We also want people to be a little uncomfortable. Because when you create intensity, when it smooths out, you can actually feel everything else happening. If we had it just with garden sounds, you wouldn’t really notice the change—it’s a blackout in your mind. So, this is designed to test all your senses.
The hardest thing with scoring this was actually: How do you keep changing the direction, and keep it interesting to keep playing after this period of time? I started with soundscape that would put you to sleep. Then I started to get a little experimental, put the rough ends on it, and then started formatting it so we go, low, high, low, high, high, low, low, high, low—and it’s almost not calculated. Because you think, “Oh, here comes a big sound.” You think it’s that and it just goes into a drum and it’s playing with your senses.
Arne Quinze, Ceramorphia. Photo by Dave Bruel for Arne Quinze. Courtesy of Konig Galerie.
AQ: I think the thing that we did together is not 2D, it’s not 3D. I think it’s beyond 4D. And that is all the layers that you will see. It’s a magic garden when you dive in. I’ve been working in installation for 30 years now, I have a lot of experience. What I really like with this one, I’m always in places, like somewhere in the middle of the jungle or in the desert or far away and making big monumental installations. This is a very intimate garden. You come in our secret garden.
We used many things to put it together, and we asked artificial intelligence to be as artificially intelligent as possible. Because I’m questioning, are we the humans and they are the aliens—or are we the aliens and they’re the humans? Because artificial intelligence is maybe the first new species on this planet. And it’s everywhere, it’s in your microphone, it’s in your telephone, and we have to learn to live with it. Still, I think artificial intelligence is far off being able to produce the emotions that we did here.
SB: Well, for me, I’m not bothered by using A.I. in many ways. You can use it for speeding up processes. But the thing is when you don’t have talent and you use it, it’s a disaster. But if you do have talent and you have a plan to enhance something that’s already great but that would have taken you probably like six months, it could take you four hours. My son has been writing this animation movie for eight years and the hardest thing was him finding the designer for his characters. Now, he has almost all of his characters done in one month, when this would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, in these ways it’s good but I think that it should be in the right hands.
Arne Quinze, Impact Glass. Photo by Dave Bruel for Arne Quinze. Courtesy of Konig Galerie.
AQ: I think artificial intelligence will also challenge us to take the next step. I’m not afraid of that, not afraid. It’s a new generation. I think we need to dive into that, to use that.
SB: The world is a smaller place now because of technology. I think the creators are now getting more confident, of stepping outside and not being afraid, which is going to push the art little further to even like what you have seen from us. And I’m seeing artists, who would have normally tried to put their hands behind their back for the perfect curator or the perfect gallery or the perfect museum to notice them. But now, I’m seeing more of the art world, they’re like, “Listen, if I get in a museum, I’m cool with that. If not, I had fun doing the piece.” And this is how you keep art alive, is by taking the risk. And I love that I see people around the world taking the risk now and I hear all type of stories of people telling me their new ideas. This is good.
AQ: Yeah, and you see also our kids, the next generation, they have possibilities that we never had. They are diving into a new world—I’m so encouraged to see what they will produce.
SB: Yeah. Because you can’t really produce for the hype; you have to produce for the passion. It’s a disaster when I see artists producing for the hype, and getting misled and their market is ran up and then one bad sale and you don’t hear from these people again—and nobody’s helping them get back on their feet. And so, I encourage all artists to take their time and really do the passion and don’t worry about the hype. Worry about the longevity and what you can change in that period. The hype, that’s going to come and go.
I apply that to myself as well, because being in the music industry is a big hype business, so naturally you bring that with you anyway. With art, when I first started, I collected for the wrong reasons. I was collecting for the hype so I was just going for the big names, just to impress people coming to the house. And then I was like, “I don’t need all this.” I need to be able to meet the artists, treat them as family, you know, not be so transactional. Most people are very transactional when they’re talking to the artist. What’s in their mind is “how can I get a piece?” instead of “is this artist at peace?” Emotionally, spiritually, physically, all of these things.
AQ: But you also worked here as an artist. It’s really not just as a composer or as a musician—a musician is an artist but this is different. You are touching material, we are sculpting together. That is how I see it.
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