07 april 2023, Flor Linckens
An interactive exhibition by Dennis Rudolph in which digital and physical realities come together
Upstream Gallery in Amsterdam, a pioneer in the field of digital art, is presenting a solo exhibition by Dennis Rudolph until 22 April. The German multimedia artist makes paintings that are imbued with an Augmented Reality layer, which only becomes visible with the help of your mobile device.
In Augmented Reality (AR) systems, virtual information is added to our real, physical world, for example with the help of special glasses or contact lenses or via the screen of your smartphone. Think of TikTok filters with false eyelashes or the IKEA app, in which you can preview what that JÄTTEBO chair would look like in your actual living room, using the screen of your phone. Unlike Virtual Reality (VR) systems, for which a fully digital reality is created, AR creates a hybrid and interwoven reality in which fictional and digital elements come together with our real life environment.
In his practice, Dennis Rudolph frequently experiments with both Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, creating a symbiosis of technology and art. The artist not only paints with oil paint, but also digitally in VR. Rudolph is inspired by Western art-historical heritage, the threshold between different (sometimes virtual) realities and the contrast between presence and absence. If, as a spectator, you hold your phone in front of the artist's work, immaterial, large-scale figures suddenly appear from his pasty, occasionally abstract-looking paintings. Viewing his work thus becomes a mysterious and interactive experience in which the invisible becomes temporarily visible, a reality that is only detectible with the aid of a mobile device. As a viewer, you effectively become part of the artwork.
Rudolph is regularly inspired for his work by the classics: from Beethoven to Greek mythology. The name of the exhibition in Upstream Gallery, 'Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft', refers to the 1849 text of the same name by the famous composer Richard Wagner, who expresses his artistic ideals in it. Wagner states in it: “As Man stands to Nature, so stands Art to Man.” Where humanity develops along the preconditions of nature, art develops along the preconditions of humanity. In that line of thought: how does art (and the perception of it) alter in a rapidly changing world in which technological changes follow each other in rapid succession? The artist tries to make us more aware of the extent to which our lives are already intertwined with technology, sometimes even literally on our wrist, in the form of a smartwatch. In contrast to many others, the artist shows an important degree of optimism in this regard.
Central to the exhibition is the large-scale painting "Götterfries I (ATLAS Shrugged)", featuring four iconic characters from Greek mythology: Hermes, Europa, Atlas and Gaia. In Rudolph's work they become 'Artificial Gods'. Dietrich Brüggemann's music provides the work with an additional layer, making it a multi-sensory Gesamtkunstwerk — a total work of art in line with Wagner's ideas about this art form.
Rudolph lives and works in Berlin and completed training at the University of the Arts in Berlin, the Repin Academy in St. Petersburg and the Institute for Language and Culture in Beijing. His work is currently on display at CODA Museum Apeldoorn (until 4 June) and Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (until 10 April). His work has previously been shown at the Museum der Arbeit in Hamburg, during the DTLA Film Festival in Los Angeles, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Project Space On The Inside in Amsterdam and the Karachi Biennale (2022) in Pakistan. During the pandemic, Rudolph created a remarkable digital artwork for the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, which viewers at home could use to transform their computer screen into a digital altarpiece: a 'Home Apocalypse'.
