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    Artist Harold Cohen’s Pioneering A.I. Art-Making Software Will Be Revisited—and Revived—for a Museum Show

    The late British painter Harold Cohen once joked that he could be the only artist to have a posthumous show of new work. He had after all created a generative art system, one so autonomous that it could theoretically produce work indefinitely, outlasting its maker. His remark was intended a mere quip, but turns out, it’s quite a prophetic one.  
    At an upcoming exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Cohen’s A.I.-powered art-making program, AARON, will be revisited—and revived. The show, titled “Harold Cohen: AARON,” will explore how the artist built the program in phases beginning in the late 1960s, and feature paintings and drawings that AARON has previously generated. It will also produce new work: the software, linked to pen plotters, will demonstrate its drawing process live in the galleries. 
    For Christiane Paul, the museum’s curator of digital art, this view into an early form of machine-powered art-making is newly relevant at a time when A.I. tools are increasingly prevalent. More so, it underscores art’s long engagement with A.I. through Cohen’s decades-spanning experimentation with the technology. 
    “AARON invites us to rethink what constitutes art and the intentionality of art in comparison to the current A.I. models,” she said over the phone. “At its core is this freehand line algorithm that Harold created. It really is a continuation of his work and at the same time, a radical break with painting and a shift to something entirely different.”
    Harold Cohen, AARON KCAT (2001). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Digital Art Committee 2023.20. © Harold Cohen Trust.
    While Cohen thrived as a painter in the early 1960s—he represented the U.K. at the Venice Biennale in 1966—he swiftly grew frustrated with his practice. Out of curiosity, he picked up coding with the thought of creating “a program to do some of the things human beings do when they make representations,” he recalled in 2004. 
    Cohen’s burgeoning interest in programming coincided with his 1968 move to California, where he took up a professorship at the University of California, San Diego. There, he first conceived and built out a rule-based drawing software, programmed to autonomously create “evocative” images. It was coded, Paul explained, “as an art-making program that has external knowledge of the world and the objects in it, and internal knowledge on how to represent these objects.” 
    The artist called his creation AARON after the biblical figure who served as a mediator for Moses. In a similar way, the program would be Cohen’s creative broker. 
    Harold Cohen, AARON KCAT (2001). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Digital Art Committee 2023.20. © Harold Cohen Trust.
    From 1973, Cohen would create increasingly complex iterations of AARON as his algorithm grew in sophistication to include compositional rules and other drawing strategies. Where the early models could only generate black-and-white shapes, the 1980s versions could create figures in a visual space and the 2000s editions abstract floral patterns. These works have since been collected by museums from the V&A to the Tate. 
    Since 2017, with the launch of the Whitney’s acquisition committee focused on digital art, Paul has sought to collect variations of the AARON software, which number around 60. “What I would like to do is create for the Whitney an archive of the [program’s] crucial phases,” she said.
    So far, the museum has acquired the more well-known KCAT version, which Cohen created in partnership with scientist Raymond Kurzweil’s CyberArt Technologies in 2001, and another from its so-called jungle phase around 2002. The institution has also just collected the 1960s iteration of Cohen’s freehand line algorithm, long before it was named AARON, which produced the artworks he exhibited at the 1972 show, “Three Behaviors for the Partitioning of Space,” at the L.A. County Museum of Art. 
    Harold Cohen, AARON Gijon (2007). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Digital Art Committee 2023.21. © Harold Cohen Trust.
    At the Whitney exhibition, two plotters will be creating from the KCAT software in black-and-white and from the 1960s program, which was restored, Paul said, using code that was discovered in one of Cohen’s notebooks. Originally written in BASIC, the code had to be recreated in Python. “As Harold’s son Paul Cohen put it,” she said, “we resurrected a dinosaur from three different skeletons.” 
    Also resurfacing at the show are “questions of authorship and agency in the collaboration with machines,” Paul added. They’re issues that similarly entangle conversations about A.I. today. But, as she pointed out, where contemporary text-to-image generators work off a database of questionably scraped material, AARON has been coded entirely by Cohen and its outputs are a result of their partnership. 
    So, an argument could be made that Cohen could never have his quipped-about posthumous show of new work—alas. “What AARON entails is Harold Cohen as an artist, the software itself, and the collaboration between the two, that constant back-and-forth,” said Paul. “That, of course, does not exist anymore.” 
    It’s something that Cohen himself conceded in 2011, acknowledging that “AARON will end when I end” since probably nobody would want to pick up his collaborator where he left off. “People,” he added, “should build up their own other selves.”
    “Harold Cohen: AARON” is on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, February 3 through May.

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    Ai Weiwei Takes on A.I. for a New Public Art Exhibition in London’s Piccadilly Circus

    We’ve all become used to tapping any manner of information request into Google or ChatGPT and waiting just seconds to get our reply. Still, many of life’s bigger questions have no quick and easy answer. The Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei is embarking on what has been described as “an 81-day quest for enlightenment” through his latest work Ai vs AI. Every evening between now and March, he will pose mostly philosophical questions about subjects like humanity, science, and politics to an artificial intelligence.
    Starting today, these questions, written by Ai and his close collaborators, will be publicly broadcast by CIRCA at 8.24 p.m. via London’s Piccadilly Lights and at several other international locations including Seoul, Berlin, and Milan. Ai plans to take a stab at answering these questions himself, and both his and the A.I.’s responses will be published online via CIRCA’s website and social media channels.
    This is the first time that Ai has made an artwork using A.I., although the project ties into common themes from his traditional practice such as freedom, surveillance, and corruption, addressed by questions like: “Who profits when disinformation is sold?”, “Is true democracy possible?”, and “Are you controlled by the privileged class?”
    Rendering of Ai Weiwei’s Ai vs A.I. on the Piccadilly Lights in London. Photo: © CIRCA.
    The implication seems to be that, in an age of information overload, we must not shy from mulling over life’s more imponderable, divisive dilemmas that will inform the shape of our lives and societies. Other examples of Ai’s 81 questions include: “Is there a way to decolonize our minds?”, “Do human beings long for death?”, “Is polygamy or polyandry better?”, and “Can safety be built on the insecurity of others?”
    The number 81 represents the number of days that the dissident artist spent imprisoned by the Chinese government in 2011, a time marked by unrelenting interrogation and yet no real freedom of speech. “Authorities always know more than you, and they play a game of not telling you what they know,” said Ai. “Everybody has the right to ask questions.”
    In recent months, Ai has once again run into issues around freedom of expression after he posted a controversial take on the Israel-Hamas conflict on X: “The sense of guilt around the persecution of the Jewish people has been, at times, transferred to offset the Arab world. Financially, culturally, and in terms of media influence, the Jewish community has had a significant presence in the United States. The annual $3bn aid package to Israel has, for decades, been touted as one of the most valuable investments the United States has ever made. This partnership is often described as one of shared destiny.”
    Behind the scenes of Ai vs A.I.. Photo: Leroy Boateng, courtesy of CIRCA.
    The post was soon deleted and Lisson Gallery decided to put on indefinite hold an exhibition of new works by Ai that was originally going to open in November. Other shows planned in New York and Berlin were also called off. At the time, Ai told The Art Newspaper that Lisson had “good intentions” and that it wanted “to avoid further disputes and for my own wellbeing.” CIRCA chose not to comment on the X post or its decision to collaborate with Ai.
    “A war is cruel in the sense that it destroys families, inflicts physical harm, and takes away innocent lives,” Ai Weiwei told Artnet News in October. “Censorship and the prohibition of thoughts are equally cruel if not crueler; it is a practice that hurts the soul of our society, a symbol of prevailing darkness, and it should be seen as a warning of a barbaric time.”
    Since 2020, the Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Arts (CIRCA) has been using the Piccadilly Lights to broadcast new works of art by celebrated artists so that they can be enjoyed by passersby for free. Artists previously commissioned by CIRCA include Frank Bowling, Douglas Gordon, Caroline Walker, Anne Imhof, Laure Prouvost, Shirin Neshat, Marina Abramović, Yoko Ono, and Vivienne Westwood.

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    A Museum Show in London Is Resurfacing Masterpieces by a Long-Overlooked Renaissance Painter

    When we think of early Renaissance Florence, great masters like Masaccio, Fra Filippo Lippi, and Fra Angelico come immediately to mind. The National Gallery in London is making the case for us to reconsider another important painter, Francesco Pesellino, who was greatly admired in his lifetime has since been overlooked.
    Born in 1422, Pesellino as a young boy was taken under the wing of his grandfather Giuliano Pesello, also a painter. By his 20s, he had established a reputation for producing delicate, small-scale work that was laden with rich detail. For this reason, he was often commissioned to make personal objects for private devotion or to decorate domestic interiors. Notably, he spent a period working in close collaboration with Fra Filippo Lippi. When he died in 1457, aged just 35, from the plague, Lippi even stepped in to complete an unfinished panel painting for the high altar of the church of the Holy Trinity in the nearby city of Pistoia.
    Francesco Pesellino, The Triumph of David (Detail) (1445–50). Photo: © The National Gallery, London.
    Other highlights of the National Gallery show include panels depicting the life of David, which are newly conserved for the occasion. These pieces show off Pesellino’s talent for building up complex narrative scenes filled with exotic animals, ornate outfits, and heraldic symbolism set against atmospheric, wintry landscapes. The works are displayed in the round, allowing visitors to get up close and follow their unfolding storyline.
    “From what we know of him, if he had lived longer, he would have achieved much more than he did,” was how the great 16th-century Italian art historian Vasari summarized Pesellino’s achievements. Luckily, this bountiful survey of all that the artist did manage to produce in 35 years offers plenty for new audiences to feast on.
    Check out more paintings from the exhibition below.
    Francesco Pesellino and Fra Filippo Lippi and Workshop, Diptych – Annunciation (c.1450–55). Photo: © The Courtauld / Bridgeman Images.
    Francesco Pesellino, The Triumph of David (Detail) (1445–50). Photo: © The National Gallery, London.
    Francesco Pesellino, The Story of David and Goliath (Detail) (1445–50). Photo: © The National Gallery, London.
    Francesco Pesellino, Virgin and Child (c. 1450). Photo: Alain Basset, © Lyon MBA.
    Francesco Pesellino, King Melchior Sailing to the Holy Land (1445–50). Photo: © Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA.
    Francesco Pesellino and Fra Filippo Lippi and Workshop, Angel (Left Hand) (1455–60). Photo: © The National Gallery, London.
    Fra Filippo Lippi and Workshop, Saint Zeno exorcising the Daughter of the Emperor Gallienus: Predella Panel (Saint Zeno exorcising the Daughter of Gallienus) (1455–60). Photo: © The National Gallery, London.
    Fra Filippo Lippi and Workshop, Saint Jerome and the Lion: Predella Panel (1455–60). Photo: © The National Gallery, London.
    “Pesellino: A Renaissance Master Revealed” is on at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London, through March 10, 2024.

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    Filmmaker Bennett Miller’s A.I.-Enhanced Sepia Visions Go on View at Gagosian Beverly Hills

    Going on view at Gagosian in Beverly Hills is a series of sepia prints by filmmaker Bennett Miller, depicting enigmatic and downright eerie scenes. They recall the portraiture and documentary feel of early photography, right down to their grainy surfaces. The catch? None of them are real. 
    The show brings together Miller’s latest experiments with artificial intelligence. Specifically, he has used the text-to-image generator DALL-E to produce images that mimic the look and feel of 19th- and 20th-century photographs, imbued with an air of disquiet and uncanniness. With them, Miller hopes to demonstrate A.I.’s increasing ability to deep-fake reality, skew history, and ultimately, reshape perceptions. 
    Bennett Miller, Untitled (2023). Courtesy of Gagosian.
    It’s an exploration the director embarked on with his first body of images, which was showcased at Gagosian New York last year. His new series remains just as resonant as A.I. gains in capabilities and popularity, with machine-imagined art increasingly closing the gap between what’s real and what’s generated. 
    “The emergence of A.I.,” Miller told Artnet News at the launch of his first show, “has brought us to the precipice of imagination-defying transformations and there do not seem to be any adults in the room.”  
    Bennett Miller, Untitled (2023). Courtesy of Gagosian.
    The director is well-placed to interrogate the meeting of reality and artificiality. His previous films such as Capote (2005) and Foxcatcher (2014) have adapted real-life events for the cinema; he is also currently developing a documentary on this “extraordinary moment” when A.I. is impacting our perceptions (Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, is set to be featured). 
    His latest images offer a view of a shaky reality. In one, an enormous whale appears to have landed on a theatrical stage; in another, an unconscious woman is bundled up in a snow-white bed, her silhouette deeply out-of-focus. The aesthetic is recognizable, but the scenarios are illusory—an ambiguity meant to jar the viewer into what Miller termed “real awareness and consideration.” 
    Bennett Miller, Untitled (2023). Courtesy of Gagosian.
    In its media release, Gagosian likened Miller’s latest works to spiritualist photographs, in particular “Cottingley Fairies,” a series of otherworldly snapshots staged by two young girls, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, in 1917. But where the pair sought to make real the mythical being of the fairy, Miller’s ongoing ventures into A.I. accomplish the opposite in their pursuit of the unreal. His fairies remain fairies.  
    “Bennett Miller” is on view at Gagosian, 456 N Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, January 11 through February 10. 

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    Poland Withdraws Its ‘Anti-European’ Submission to the Venice Biennale

    Poland’s new government has controversially withdrawn the submission for its national pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, which had been organized by the previous right-wing populist ruling party Law and Justice. Now instead, Poland will showcase a performance video by the Ukrainian art collective Open Group.
    The previous plan for Poland’s pavilion was an exhibition titled “Polish Exercises in the Tragedy of the World: Between Germany and Russia” by the painter Ignacy Czwartos. His paintings speared both Germany and Russia, detailing their various mistreatments of Poland throughout modern history. One painting shows former German chancellor Angela Merkel connected to Vladimir Putin by a St Andrew’s cross manipulated to look like a swastika.
    The exhibition was branded “an anti-European manifesto” by Polish art critic Karolina Plinta, according to the Guardian, and its nationalist tone was widely regarded to be out of step with the biennale’s inclusive theme of “Foreigners Everywhere.” Even members of the jury that recommended Czwartos told the Art Newspaper that the submission represented a retreat into a “narrow-minded, ideologically paranoid and shameful position.”
    Installation view of “The Painter Was Kneeling When Painting” exhibition by Ignacy Cwartos at Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Poland. Photo: Juliusz Sokołowski, courtesy of Zachęta National Gallery of Art.
    The Law and Justice party had announced the pavilion on October 31, during the final few weeks of its eight year rule. It had just lost the majority vote in a significant parliamentary election held on October 15, which eventually saw a coalition formed by three opposition parties, ushering in a new centrist prime minister in Donald Tusk (who was previously in office from 2007-2014).
    Poland’s new culture minister Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz wasted no time in withdrawing the submission, deciding instead to give the spotlight to a back-up option Repeat After Me by Ukrainian art collective Open Group. This performance video with a karaoke-style installation features Ukrainian refugees sharing their experiences of Russia’s war on Ukraine through spoken dialogue and by immersing viewers in the sounds of shelling, gunfire, and air raid sirens.
    Speaking to the Art Newspaper, Czwartos branded the move an act of “censorship.” “The project refers also to the present day, above all to Putin’s brutal attack in Ukraine,” he added. “It is not an anti-European project at all, but rather it refers to the forces that had destroyed Europe in the past and today.”
    Sienkiewicz has also removed the right-wing painter Janusz Janowski from his post as director of Zachęta National Gallery of Art, replacing him with former deputy director Justyna Markiewicz. Zachęta is Poland’s foremost contemporary art museum and its director oversees Poland’s participation at Venice. Czwartos was originally selected thanks to Janowski’s recommendation based on an exhibition that he had co-curated himself at Zachęta just a few months prior.
    Check out our continually updated list of every national pavilion that will be on view at the 60th Venice Biennale, which runs from April 20 through November 24, 2024.

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    In a Major New Show, Caspar David Friedrich Gets Paired Up With Contemporary Artists for a Searing Portrait of Climate Change

    It’s a compelling classic: In Caspar David Friedrich’s The Wanderer Above the Fog (1818), a lone man on a rock gazes out over range of mountains half-blanketed in fog, his back to the viewer. His hair is tousled, he’s sharply dressed with a cane. Situated dead-center in the picture plane, the figure stands in sharp contrast to the sky and its gentle grays and whites. He’s a solitary soul contemplating the power and beauty of nature: in it, but not of it.
    The painting is arguably the artist’s most famous work, a cornerstone of German Romanticism. Yet humans’ place in nature has ensnared artists since time immemorial—and a new show positions Friedrich’s timeless investigations alongside contemporary artists and his contemporaries. The major exhibition, which commemorates the 250th anniversary of Friedrich’s birth year, finds a particular relevance among today’s compounding environmental emergencies.
    On view until April 1, 2024, the Hamburger Kunsthalle’s sweeping retrospective “Caspar David Friedrich: Art for a New Age”  features 70 well-known paintings and more than of his 100 drawings by the 19th century artist alongside about 20 additional pieces by his contemporaries, including even his brother Christian (Boy Sleeping on a Grave, (1802). A second section dedicates itself to 20th and 21st century artists—among them Julian Charriere, Susan Schuppli, and Nina K. Jurk—whose work connects with Friedrich or embodies aspects of the humanity’s complex relationships with the natural world.
    Julian Charriere The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories III (2013). Courtesy DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM, Berlin © Julian Charrière / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023
    Friedrich’s landscapes and remote protagonists highlighted a shifting connection to nature when he created them in the early 19th century as the Industrial Revolution was rapidly gaining traction, but the artist’s work has passed through many “new ages” since. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he was rediscovered and canonized as a Romantic (by the time he died in Dresden in 1840, he’d fallen from visibility). A few decades later, the movers and shakers of the Third Reich saw his work as the epitome of German-ness (unlike other painters of his era, he stayed at home in northern Germany, rather than decamping to Italy). It took until 1974 for that nationalist association to wear off: that year, his work was widely shown in Hamburg and Dresden, each on a respective side of a divided Germany. Now, in yet another new age of global climate panic, his landscape paintings and nature studies take on a different urgency.
    The show opens with early self-portraits—in one, from around 1800 and done in black chalk on paper, he looks coquettishly at the viewer. Subsequent rooms move from topic to topic: Gathered in one space are Friedrich’s drawn studies of trees, thistles, rocks, leaves, and clouds, all rendered in meticulous detail. One room is all about ice: Near his The Sea of Ice (1823–24)—an aggressive painting of jagged shards of breaking river ice consuming a capsizing ship—are smaller color studies of ice fragments. Another gallery focusses entirely on Friedrichs’ paintings of ruins set in lush forests.
    The artist’s greatest hits are also here in all their glory: Ice and Wanderer, of course, but also The Monk by the Sea (1808-10) which shows a lone, cloaked monk on a beach contemplating turbulent skies and water. Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (1818) frame a multicolored sea with brilliant white cliffs. Mountain Landscape with Rainbow (1809-10) sees a glimmering rainbow cut across the dark heavens. In Friedrichs’ later works human figures become scarcer and the land and sky’s undulating colors more prominent.
    Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Das Eismeer, (1823/24). Hamburger Kunsthalle. © Hamburger Kunsthalle/bpk. Foto: Elke Walford
    The show’s contemporary section, consisting of the work of 21 artists, does a daring long jump into the present, but it’s where Friedrich’s ongoing inspiration unfolds and begins to take on new meanings. Swaantje Güntzel riffs on Friedrich by having herself photographed from the back in a series of images (Arctic Joghurt, 2. Dezember 2021) in which she throws a plastic yogurt cup into a Norwegian fjord.
    Hiroyuki Masuyama’s photomontages in LED boxes are high-tech “copies” of several of Friedrich’s hits, and Olafur Eliasson’s Color Experiment no. 86, (2019), a large disc in gradated light colors, uses the exact hues in The Sea of Ice. The lush forest in David Claerbout’s Wildfire (meditation on fire) (2019/20)—a vast light box showing a computer-generated forest fire—mirror the dense foliage of Friedrich’s paintings, but here, the trees slowly burn.
    David Claerbout Wildfire (meditation on fire), (2019–2020). In collaboration with Musea Brugge, courtesy of the artist and Kunstmuseum Bonn, Dauerleihgabe der KiCo Collection Bonn. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023
    The show closes with works by Kehinde Wiley: In one of two oversize paintings (The Prelude (Babacar Mené), 2021), a contemporary “wanderer” again overlooks the sky, fog, and a mountain landscape from a rocky crag; this Black figure, recalling Friedrich’s seminal work (he holds two canes), is turned just a little toward the viewer.
    But it’s in Wiley’s six-channel video The Prelude (2021) that we finally see faces. Black figures wander through a snowy mountain landscape; some wear furs, others are shirtless and shivering. There’s lush music, a narration taken from William Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem “The Prelude,” and often, the protagonists stare straight into the camera.
    Only here in Wiley’s art does humanity, not nature, take the central role. Beyond the artist’s ongoing disruption of art’s Eurocentric canon and his reference to colonialism’s ravages, the works seem to demand us to take responsibility for the ailing world surrounding us, so that everyone and everything can survive, and maybe even thrive.
    “Caspar David Friedrich: Art for a New Age” is on view until April 1, 2024, at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg. Additional exhibitions celebrating Caspar David Friedrich will run throughout 2024 in Berlin and Dresden.
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    How Artist Katharina Grosse ‘Accelerates and Compresses Time’ in Her Color-Filled Museum Interventions

    Amid the vaulted ceilings and marble floors of the interior of Vienna’s Albertina Museum, slashes of vibrant color in every possible hue explode across the monochrome white walls. The chromatic intervention is courtesy of artist Katharina Grosse, whose contemporary artworks push the boundaries of form— collapsing structures, traversing corners and edges, spilling from wall to floor in exuberant motion. Wielding a compressorized airbrush allows the artist to achieve unparalleled force and dynamism, electrifying the staid white cube.
    Installation view, “Katharina Grosse: Why Three Tones Do Not Form a Triangle.” Photo: Sandro E.E. Zanzinger Photographie, courtesy of the Albertina Museum.
    In an exclusive interview filmed as part of Art21’s Extended Play series back in 2015, Grosse explained the genesis of her practice, which has vaunted her to become one of the most respected artists of the 21st century.
    “Interestingly enough,” the artist said wryly, “color is an element in painting that has always been discussed… as the female, less stable, less clear, and not so intelligent element… whereas the concept—the line, the drawing—is more the male, the clear, the progressive, and intelligent part of the artwork.” Of course, Grosse utilizes color to create a concept, as she noted, “in relationship to the crystallized and built and materialized world that is part of what I do when I paint in space.” 
    Many of the artist’s interventions at museums, including the current exhibition at the Albertina, are site-specific and only last for the duration of the show. They become the space, transforming it entirely. “All the different actions go together on one surface,” she explained, “so it’s little bit like violence in a movie, which kind of accelerates and compresses time.”

    Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s series Extended Play, below. “Katharina GrosseWhy Three Tones Do Not Form a Triangle” is on view at the Albertina through April 1, 2024. 
    [embedded content]
    This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of news-making artists. A new season of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series, like New York Close Up and Extended Play, and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org.
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    See Artist Gregor Gleiwitz’s New Paintings That Abstract Nature to Expressive Effect

    A new series of large-scale abstract paintings by Gregor Gleiwitz at Setareh gallery in Düsseldorf are inspired by the natural world, which may not seem obvious at first glance. The works are filled with whirling organic forms, but these contain a frenetic expressivity and vibrant palette that feels entirely hyperreal. Rather than reflecting the world back at us, Gleiwitz has succeeded in capturing the unpredictable, all-enveloping tenor of our emotional responses to it.
    Born in Poland in 1977, Gleiwitz currently lives and works in Berlin. He recalled venturing out for long walks in the fields near his studio to make watercolor studies en plein air, which left him inspired by how the sun’s rays bring lightness and, with it, meaning to our lives. “The canvas is the light space in which the experienced world takes on a new form as a result of the stream of consciousness,” he said.
    Gregor Gleiwitz in his studio. Photo courtesy of the artist.
    Each painting is an impression that belongs to a particular day, which is why Gleiwitz gives as each work’s title its date of completion. “Seeing is wandering, landscape is figure, and the picture is a portrait,” he said. “Searching anew every day, following the sun inside and out.”
    By layering glossy paint that Gleiwitz then freely scrapes, smears, and swirls across the canvas with a palette knife, he is able to achieve a pleasingly lyrical effect that is alternately enlivening and lulling. In this way, he foregrounds how our experiences of the external world are always mediated by our senses. This offers an interesting twist on the return to the pleasures of whimsical, floral art in contemporary art, which has felt very of the zeitgeist in recent months.
    “Within a German painting tradition which has grown out of the accomplishments of masters from Gerhard Richter through Albert Oehlen, Gregor Gleiwitz has developed a distinct oeuvre of near abstraction,” said Lee Plested, director of the gallery. “Incorporating the mystical dimensions of the expressive, Gleiwitz is able to push beyond the literal image to realize planes of encounter which resonate in multiple dimensions and temporalities while maintaining the underlying presence of their physical origins.”
    “Sun Script” is on view at Setareh gallery in Düsseldorf and online through January 20. Check out more paintings from the show below. His work will also be included in “Nature Studies,” a forthcoming two person exhibition with Miron Schmückle at the gallery’s Berlin location from February 8 until Mary 9, 2024.
    Gregor Gleiwitz, 08.10.2023 (2023). Image courtesy of Setareh Gallery, Berlin.
    Gregor Gleiwitz, 06.09.2023 (2023). Image courtesy of Setareh Gallery, Berlin.
    Gregor Gleiwitz, 17.08.2023 (2023). Image courtesy of Setareh Gallery, Berlin.
    Gregor Gleiwitz, 25.07.2023 (2023). Image courtesy of Setareh Gallery, Berlin.
    Gregor Gleiwitz, 16.05.2023 (2023). Image courtesy of Setareh Gallery, Berlin.

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