Rarely have museums been as full of life as now. This exhibition transforms the museum into a place where visitors can meet avatars, human machines that are able to move, talk, and learn; observe the richness of the movements, language, and responses of these transformed beings; witness how an animatronic white mouse speaks to a candle; and be seduced by a figure that provokes subjective and objective reactions, equally stimulating and repelling the viewer.
Progress is being made in the automation of life and a transformation of our social environment. Artificial intelligence is taking over and has the potential to create lifelike forms of existence. While humans are pushing for technological progress, they are on the verge of being replaced. With the exhibition Transformers, the Museum Frieder Burda is breaking new ground by participating in an experiment that transforms the museum into a hybrid and utopian arrangement. This show presents artificial beings that critically inspect the museum and its classic masterpieces. This fiction is a new dialogical situation that plays through the what-if scenario of a radically changed future.
Artists such as Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Gerhard Richter, and Sigmar Polke were all influential in changing the traditional expectations of a work of art in their own eras. The juxtaposition of masterpieces by these artists from the collection of Frieder Burda with artificial beings creates multidimensional rooms of experience in the museum to which visitors will have to adjust. This brings life into the museum, and we come one step closer to the metaverse – even if it is not real, it reflects our increasingly artificially transformed world.
The participating artists – Louisa Clement (b. 1987), Ryan Gander (b. 1976), Timur Si-Qin (b. 1984), and Jordan Wolfson (b. 1980) – are all digital natives. Their biographies and work reflect the growing spheres of influence held by virtual possibilities.
TRANSFORMERS - Masterpieces of the Frieder Burda Collection in Dialogue with Artificial Beings
Jordan Wolfson, Female Figure, 2014, Studio Jordan Wolfson © Courtesy the artist, David Zwirner, New York, Sadie Coles HQ, London; Foto: Markus Tretter, Kunsthaus Bregenz
TRANSFORMERS - Masterpieces of the Frieder Burda Collection in Dialogue with Artificial Beings
Jackson Pollock, Composition No 16, 1948, Museum Frieder Burda © Pollock-Krasner Foundation/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022
TRANSFORMERS - Masterpieces of the Frieder Burda Collection in Dialogue with Artificial Beings
Timur Si-Qin, Untitled, 2011, Privatsammlung © Courtesy the artist and Société, Berlin; Foto: Société, Berlin
TRANSFORMERS - Masterpieces of the Frieder Burda Collection in Dialogue with Artificial Beings
Markus Lüpertz, Zyklop I, II, III – dithyrambisch, 1973, Museum Frieder Burda © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022
TRANSFORMERS - Masterpieces of the Frieder Burda Collection in Dialogue with Artificial Beings
Louisa Clement, Repräsentantin, 2021 © Courtesy die Künstlerin und Cassina Projects, Mailand; Foto: Louisa Clement
TRANSFORMERS - Masterpieces of the Frieder Burda Collection in Dialogue with Artificial Beings
Ryan Gander, I I I…, 2019, Animatronische Skulptur und Ton, Maße variabel, Sammlung Harm Müller-Spreer © The artist/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022, Image courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin; Foto: N Kazakov
TRANSFORMERS - Masterpieces of the Frieder Burda Collection in Dialogue with Artificial Beings
Wenn Sie regelmäßig über die Aktivitäten des Museum Frieder Burda informiert werden möchten, tragen Sie hier bitte Ihre E-Mail Adresse ein. Vielen Dank!
