23 APRIL – 11 MAY 2024 | GALLERY

MARIUS SPERLICH: SPIEGELBILDER: CLOWNS

On the occasion of Gallery Weekend Berlin, EXPANDED.ART is delighted to present SPIEGELBILDER: CLOWNS by Marius Sperlich, his first solo exhibition, at the gallery. 

SPIEGELBILDER: CLOWNS is an exploration of artificial intelligence as a reflection of all human progress and knowledge.

"Did you ever wonder what toying with insanity looks like?

I created a photography style that mimics surreal paintings using only analog effects. 0% Editing. Real photography made so complex that it's impossible to replicate, even for A.I.

In the process of creating a single artwork, thousands of images need to be taken. It's like finding a needle in a haystack. As soon as you move even a millimeter, the image changes a hundredfold. Often, you see the desired image in the viewfinder and then lose it again because you blink or exhale and lose focus again. The exhibition is the result of 150.000 images taken by me.

The workflow feels like an algorithm giving you a thousand options per second. You just need to find the right image. The entire project follows Einstein's quote: 'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.'

In this case, we always get different results, but only one image from each session can be chosen. The infinite search for aesthetics and form by a perfectionist is almost a form of masochism, a mental and spiritual exercise testing my own limits—edging on insanity.

At what point is an image recognizable, and when is it too abstract, melted, or unclear?"

SPIEGELBILDER: CLOWNS by Marius Sperlich, navigates on this narrow line, dealing with the learning of algorithms and AI, whose images become clearer as they receive more training data, and the increasingly unclear image of humans in technological progress.


23 APRIL – 11 MAY 2024 
OPENING RECEPTION: 23 APRIL | 6-9 PM CET
The artist will be present. 



Friedrichstraße 67, 10117 Berlin
Monday - Saturday: 11 AM - 6 PM CET

SPIEGELBILDER: CLOWNS by Marius Sperlich is an exploration of artificial intelligence as a reflection of all human progress and knowledge.

SPIEGELBILDER: CLOWNS

MARIUS SPERLICH | GALLERY 

20-29 JANUARY 2023 | BERLIN

Verse x EXPANDED.ART

 curated by Verse (Leyla Fakhr) and EXPANDED.ART (Anika Meier) aims to define a point in history where a network of artists are generating abstract works with algorithms and codes. Artists employing formal ideas of abstraction in their codes and algorithms are pioneering compositions that take generative art to new horizons.

The origins of abstract art are debated, with some tracing its roots to ancient Islamic art and others locating its beginnings in the early 20th century Western art movement. During the years leading up to World War I, artists such as Delaunay, Kandinsky, Malevich, and Tatlin embraced abstraction in their practice. While Kandinsky is often credited as the first artist to create purely abstract, non-representational paintings, his work was later challenged by the abstract art of Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, whose focus on spirituality differed from Kandinsky's logical theories. The emergence of the de Stijl group in the Netherlands and the Dada group in Switzerland further expanded the spectrum of abstract art, leading to what some consider the two golden eras of the movement: 1912-1925 and 1947-1970.

Since the late 1950s, a group of artists have been utilising algorithmic procedures to create art. Early pioneers in this field include Herbert W. Franke and Vera Molnar, whose works are featured in this exhibition. In recent years, there has been an eruption of abstract works within the digital realm, where artists are increasingly employing code to create generative works. This has led to the emergence of a new, vibrant movement and community that has yet to be fully explored within the broader context of art history.

Artists are using algorithms and codes to create formal ideas of abstraction in their compositions, pushing the boundaries of the movement and inviting viewers to appreciate the works for their aesthetic effects and compositions alone. This experience is similar to the enjoyment of music, where pure patterns of form, color, and line create a powerful impact.

By exploring the intersection of art and technology through the works of these innovative artists, GENERATIVE ABSTRACTION AND BEYOND invites the viewer to consider the ways in which these fields interact and influence one another.

 Herbert W. Franke, Lee Mullican, Heinrich Heidersberger, Anna Lucia, Kim Asendorf, Banz & Bowinkel, Anna Carreras, Anna Beller, Ira Greenberg, Iskra Velitchkova, Jonas Lund, Leander Herzog & Richard Nadler, Aaron Penne, Lisa Orth, Marcel Schwittlick, Manuel Rossner, Ivona Tau, Julien Espagnon, Damjanski, and Olga Fradina. 

 20 January | 6-9 PM CET | EXPANDED.ART | Friedrichstraße 67 | Berlin
The artists Richard Nadler, Anna Beller, Manuel Rossner, Banz & Bowinkel, and Marcel Schwittlick will be present. 



 29 January 6-9 PM CET | EXPANDED.ART | Friedrichstraße 67, Berlin
Anika Meier in conversation with Kim Asendorf and Leander Herzog on the past and present of generative art on the blockchain. 


The NFTs will be minted on Ethereum and will be available to collect 

. The artists will release 1/1s, limited and open editions, and long-form generative art projects. Prints, paintings and drawings will be available on 

, Leander Herzog & Richard Nadler (fxhash, Tezos)


24-25 JANUARY | 9-9PM CET | 3PM ET | 12PM PT

GENERATIVE ABSTRACTION AND BEYOND aims to define a point in history where a network of artists are generating abstract works with algorithms and codes. In collaboration with Verse. 

GENERATIVE ABSTRACTION AND BEYOND | GALLERY

16-30 JANUARY 2024 | SHOWROOM

DANILO XHEMA: 16:9

EXPANDED.ART is delighted to present 16:9, Danilo Xhema’s first solo exhibition, at the Showroom in Berlin. On view on the five screens are 20 new digital artworks by Xhema that deal with nostalgia as a safe place where we all bask and cover ourselves with memories, with bitterness, with pleasantness, but at the same time pricking sensations full of past events and concepts that will never return.

Everything starts and revolves around 16:9; everything revolves around the screens positioned in a physical and tangible space for existing works that can only be seen through those screens themselves.


16-30 JANUARY 2024
OPENING RECEPTION: 16 JANUARY | 6-9 PM CET

DANILO XHEMA

ARTIST

DANILO XHEMA: 16:9 16-26 JANUARY 2024 Everything starts and revolves around 16:9; everything revolves around the screens positioned in a physical and tangible space for existing works that can only be seen through those screens themselves. <meta charset="utf-8">EXPANDED.ART | SHOWROOM Friedrichstraße 67, 10117 Berlin

DANILO XHEMA | 16:9

In the vibrant intersection of traditional and digital, Danilo Xhema has forged a unique path, blending the world of painting with the realm of digital art. His exploration of technology during the COVID-19 pandemic became a gateway to a new frontier, encompassing NFTs, tokenization, and an innovative fusion of mediums.

IRONY AND NOSTALGIA 

DANILO XHEMA: "ART HAS TO CONVEY A MESSAGE"

MAGAZINE

16:9 is Danilo Xhema’s first solo exhibition at the Showroom in Berlin. On view on the five screens are 20 new digital artworks by Xhema that deal with nostalgia as a safe place where we all bask and cover ourselves with memories, with bitterness, with pleasantness, but at the same time pricking sensations full of past events and concepts that will never return.

16:9

DANILO XHEMA | SHOWROOM

2-26 MARCH 2023 | BERLIN

HERBERT W FRANKE: CODED BEAUTY

"People generally dismiss technology as a threat to art. I will attempt to demonstrate that it is not, and even opens up previously unimagined artistic territory." – Herbert W. Franke, 1957

EXPANDED. ART is pleased to present the solo exhibition CODED BEAUTY by Herbert W Franke in collaboration with the estate. The show is comprised of eight works from Franke’s series MATH ART, created between 1980 and 1995; early generative photographs from the 1950s; his Biennale serigraphy, including QUADRATE (1969/70); and further serigraphies. He held the belief that the beauty of structures shown in visual arts is founded on mathematical codes and spent a lifetime in search of them. In May 2022, Frank turned 95, and the world seems to have finally caught up with his art and thinking. His first NFT Drop, MATH ART, was sold out within 30 seconds, and he was the headliner at the Tezos Booth at Art Basel in 2023 with a work from 1979. Herbert W. Franke died on July 16, 2022, at the age of 95, leaving behind an extensive oeuvre.

Herbert W. Franke is a universal genius. For several decades, he separated three lives: the caver and scientist, the artist, curator and art theorist, and the science fiction author. Only on the occasion of his solo exhibition in 2010 at the ZKM Karlsruhe did he bring these three lives and careers together under the title WANDERER BETWEEN THE WORLDS. In the early 1950s, caving led him to experiment with light and technology. He kept his curiosity throughout his life; it was his drive to examine new technologies for their artistic potential. His pioneering spirit made him one of the first computer artists who was more than six decades ahead of his time.

In the 1950s, he started generating art based on mathematical principles, which led to his first pieces, LICHTFORMEN and OSZILLOGRAMME (created with an anlog computer), and finally used digital computer programs from the 1960s on. LICHTFORMEN are early examples of generative photography. In contrast to depicting photography, this is about the realization of Herbert W. Franke's abstract pictorial ideas – if you will, about visual inventions that show forms and structures that have not already existed but were first created or made visible by special technical means. Unlike the light graphics of the 1920s, it is about images that were systematically created under defined conditions. For the light forms, with the help of Andreas Hübner, a then-journeyman in the Siemens photo laboratory, mechano-optical self-constructions were used. The main instruments were white-painted, illuminated wires that were moved when the aperture was open. Motifs were created with a rotating disk set up in the foreground with free gaps through which the illuminated wire was recorded with an open aperture. The rotating disk leads to a stoboscopic effect. A special case were the so-called "spatial studies," in which the wire was not guided by hand but hung up and set in rotation. The background was illuminated by the projection of a light-dark line grid.

In 1970, Franke was represented at the Venice Biennale and showed a screen print of the series QUADRATE created with the digital computer, in which he let chance and algorithm work together. The square picture is made up of three types of elements that differ in size and color. They were distributed across the screen using a random number generator.

The number of elements in each of the three groups depends on the knowledge of information aesthetics, which shows which group deserves the most attention: the few large squares. And which is perceived as the dominant element of the picture: the medium-sized squares? The smallest elements, on the other hand, form the background, so to speak, and are given the least attention. The series was created with the IBM 1130 system at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry, Munich, developed by the Institute for Communications Engineering at the Technical University of Munich, and developed by the scientific project manager for development and construction, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Georg Färber. At that time, he was an assistant at the TU Institute.

In 1980, Herbert W. Franke began his fifteen-year collaboration with programmer Horst Helbig at the German Aerospace Center in Oberpfaffenhofen. Together, they studied mathematical disciplines in relation to aesthetics. The series MATH ART is the output of their research at the intersection of science and art. It reveals a universe of numbers transformed into images through a variety of shapes and colors reminiscent of Pop Art.

From the very beginning, it was clear to him that it is the artist's mission to examine new technologies and their social significance through the lens of their creative potential. For Herbert W. Franke mathematics are the essence of visual arts. While he saw the artist as an analytical maker using mathematics to create structures, he assigned the computer the task of modulating these principles of order through varying random processes. Franke, therefore, began to think of the computer as an artist's creative partner very early on.

EXHIBITION

Herbert W. Franke is a universal genius, you can say that with a clear conscience. For several decades he separated three lives: he was the caver and scientist, the artist and curator, the art theorist and the science fiction author. Only on the occasion his solo exhibition in 2010 at the ZKM Karlsruhe did he bring these three lives and careers together under the title "Wanderer Between the Worlds". In the early 1950s caving led him to experiment with light and technology. He kept his curiosity throughout his life; it was his drive to examine new technologies for their artistic potential. His pioneering spirit made him one of the first computer artists who was more than six decades ahead of his time. Franke discussed his visionary practice with Anika Meier in June 2022.

INTERVIEW WITH HERBERT W. FRANKE

"TECHNOLOGY IS NOT A THREAT TO ART"

"Many of the early pioneers did not dare call their work art and instead categorized it as design. But I just had nothing to lose." – Herbert W Franke 

The color served to code certain structural elements, which was of fundamental importance. The computer system at DLR in Oberpfaffenhofen, which was powerful at the time, had integrated output equipment with which the digitally developed image worlds were transferred directly to high-resolution photo film. On his own DOS PC, Franke created the preparatory work for the captivatingly vivid aesthetics of this mathematical investigation. In the beginning, there were algebraic formulas for three-dimensional spatial areas: The three dimensions were converted mostly into two-dimensional landscapes, whereby the "contour lines," i.e., the z-axis of the room, were color-coded with specially developed color grids. Starting with algebraic landscapes, the two worked their way through a wide variety of disciplines via wave functions, Fourier transformations, broken dimensions, and logical connections until they finally visualized complex and irrational numbers as well as random processes and logical connections with their method.

CODED BEAUTY gives an overview of Franke’s belief in the artist’s mission to use technology to open up previously unimagined artistic territories.

Friedrichstrasse 67, 10117 Berlin
Monday - Saturday: 11 AM - 6 PM CET

Herbert W Franke: CODED BEAUTY  2–26 March 2023 EXPANDED.ART | BERLIN
CODED BEAUTY is comprised of eight works from Franke’s series MATH ART created between 1980 and 1995, early generative photographs from the 1950s, his Biennale serigraphy, including QUADRATE (1969/70), and further serigraphies. 
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HERBERT W FRANKE | CODED BEAUTY

Math Art Logic

Herbert W. Franke has always envisioned his MATH ART series to be displayed in this way, light and bright and strong colors, Francisco Carolinum in Linz made it possible for the first time for his solo show VISIONARY in 2022. LOGIC and 3D-LANDSCAPES were not part of Franke‘s MATH ART NFT collection released in 2022. No NFT is connected to the Light Box. Payable in ETH. ABOUT HERBERT W. FRANKE Known as a universal genius, Herbert W. Franke (1927-2022) is the forefather of computer art, co-founder of Ars Electronica, mastermind of the Metaverse, and science-fiction writer. He spent his entire career bridging the worlds of art and science.
EXPANDED.ART represents the estate of Herbert W. Franke.  
ABOUT MATH ART
In 1980, Herbert W. Franke began a fifteen-year collaboration with programmer Horst Helbig at the German Aerospace Center. Together, they studied mathematical disciplines in relation to aesthetics. The series MATH ART is the output of their research at the intersection of science and art. It reveals a universe of numbers transformed into images through a variety of shapes and colors reminiscent of Pop Art. 
Throughout his entire life, Herbert W. Franke used mathematical principles for art experimentation. From the very beginning, it was clear to him that it is the artist's mission to examine new technologies and their social significance through the lens of their creative potential. For Herbert W. Franke mathematics are the essence of visual arts. While he saw the artist as an analytical maker using mathematics to create structures, he assigned the computer the task of modulating these principles of order through varying random processes. Franke, therefore, considered the computer as a creative partner for the artist very early on.
The color served to code certain structural elements and was of fundamental importance. The computer system at DLR in Oberpfaffenhofen, which was powerful at the time, had integrated output equipment with which the digitally developed image worlds were transferred directly to high-resolution photo film. On his own DOS PC, Franke created the preparatory work for the captivatingly vivid aesthetics of this mathematical investigation.
In the beginning, there were algebraic formulas for three-dimensional spatial areas: The three dimensions were converted into two-dimensional landscapes, whereby the "contour lines," i.e., the z-axis of the room, were color-coded with specially developed color grids. Starting with algebraic landscapes, the two worked their way through a wide variety of disciplines via wave functions, Fourier transformations, broken dimensions, and logical connections, until they finally visualized complex and irrational numbers as well as random processes and logical connections with their method.

Math Art 3D-Landscapes

Relief Math Art Fourier

Relief Rotationen 3

AVAILABLE WORKS

As pioneers of digital art, Herbert W Franke and Lee Mullican have left behind a significant legacy. Anika Meier discusses the artists' impact on today's digital art and NFT scene with representatives of their Estates, Susanne Päch and Cole Root. 

EARLY DIGITAL ART'S INFLUENCE ON NFTS

HERBERT W. FRANKE & LEE MULLICAN: PIONEERS AND THEIR LEGACY

Herbert W. Franke first encountered Harry Yeff’s work in Linz in the summer of 2021. Both were part of the exhibition PROOF OF ART at the Francisco Carolinum in Linz, the first museum to tell the brief history of NFTs. Franke, who was also a caver and rock collector, became interested in Harry Yeff and Trung Bao's work, VOICE GEMS, and soon a collaboration emerged: Yeff asked about the potential of using Franke's voice in an audio-visual production, and Franke responded by sending one of his voice gems, which is a vocal work of art in itself. 

In conversation with Anika Meier, Susanne Päch, the wife of Herbert W. Franke, Harry Yeff, and Trung Bao talk about the collaboration that began in 2021. Päch, who today heads the art meets science – Foundation Herbert W. Franke and lived with the artist and scientist for 40 years, also tells more about Franke's fascination with stones and what this has to do with the beginning of his artistic career.

The Beauty of Nature and An Archive of Voices

"YOUR VOICE IS YOUR IDENTITY"

Herbert W Franke's solo exhibition CODED BEAUTY explores the extensive oeuvre of the digital pioneer. It gives an overview of Franke’s belief in the artist’s mission to use technology to open up previously unimagined artistic territories.

CODED BEAUTY 

HERBERT W. FRANKE | GALLERY

29 JUNE - 19 JULY 2023 | GALLERY

CLAUDIA HART: A CHILD'S MACHIAVELLI (1994)

EXPANDED.ART is pleased to present A CHILD’S MACHIAVELLI, the first solo exhibition by Claudia Hart at the gallery in Berlin. The exhibition is comprised of 31 gouache paintings as well as digital artworks from Hart’s iconic book of the same title in an immersive environment.

A CHILD’S MACHIAVELLI was initially written and illustrated by Claudia Hart in 1995. It was inspired by Niccolo Machiavelli’s Renaissance treatise, THE PRINCE, the first book of political philosophy. Hart’s version began as a series of oil paintings and a small catalog, produced by the Realismus Studio at the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin.


In the bookstore of NGBK, Hart fell in love with Comix, a back then radical form of comic books that filled one of their shelves. She read them, fascinated. There was no such thing as a graphic novel in those days. MAUS by Art Spiegelman, the Comix masterpiece, had just been released. Hart would stand around the NGBK bookstore, reading MAUS and other related works.

"I was a figurative artist interested in historical paintings, not comic books. Nevertheless, I was inspired," Hart says.

Her response was A CHILD'S MACHIAVELLI, born as a series of 31 oil paintings, where she rewrote the Renaissance treatise by Niccolo Machiavelli as a children’s book, speaking in the youth-speak of her time. She was reflecting on the real estate and cultural war taking place in the early 1990s in Berlin. Her aphorisms focused on the workings of power. But the strategy was the same as for all of the other works she has produced since the beginning: text combined with images. It is a series of aphorisms in an illustrated book that does not need to be read in order. Each painting was a unique piece that could be combined in any order. The book has proven prescient, prefiguring the brutal tenor of contemporary US public discourse.


The catalog was eventually released as an expanded hardcover by Penguin Edition USA in 1998. In addition, there was a Nautilus Edition German version published in 1996, and an Abbeville Press French edition published in 1998. At that time, Hart reinterpreted the oil paintings to produce the series of gouache paintings on paper exhibited at EXPANDED.ART.

Hart’s approach was typical of the 1990s art world. Mimicking the visuals of a picture book, she appropriated 1920s children’s illustrations known for their sugary sweetness. The irony and twisted humor of A CHILD’S MACHIAVELLI are derived from its combination of opposites: the saccharine speech of kid’s books and the unvarnished reality of American politics. The book went out of print in 2000 but continues to be traded on the second-hand book market.

In 2019, Beatrice Books, a small experimental publisher, reissued A CHILD’S MACHIAVELLI as a more contemporary book. At that time, Hart discovered among her files a series of Flash animations created for an ebook, the early 21st-century digital format that had long since disappeared, initiated by the production company Flicker Labs in 2010.

Flicker Labs used her original gouache paintings from 1995 to begin a series of Flash animations. Adobe, which created Flash, stopped supporting it in 2011, instead focusing more on HTML. Flicker Labs shut down. In 2020, Adobe reissued Flash as part of a new software called Animate. In 2022, at the height of the crypto bubble, she realized her old Flash animations could now be opened, so she transformed her technological castaways into NFTs. The animations were narrated by Hart using vocal recordings made in 2010, including sound effects and background music. With that last transformation, she ultimately produced animations that are brutal but true insights, standing as reminders that while technologies may come and go, human frailties remain the same.

CLAUDIA HART ABOUT A CHILD’S MACHIAVELLI


"We are obviously in a period of cultural crisis, with the world slipping into autocracies, war in the Ukraine, and democracy dramatically destabilized in the USA. Social media is used to spread misinformation and engender fear and terror in order to manipulate the populace.

The little mottos that I wrote in the early nineties are more relevant now than ever. They seem to be pointedly directed at the cultural and political world of today. Yet when I wrote them, I felt that I was translating Machiavelli’s early 16th-century text into the politics of that time."


29 JUNE - 19 JULY 2023
OPENING: 29 JUNE | 6-9 PM CET




16 JULY 2023 | 6-9 PM CET
Anika Meier in conversation with Claudia Hart and Alfred Weidinger, Director of Francisco Carolinum Linz. 

CLAUDIA HART

A CHILD’S MACHIAVELLI by Claudia Hart was initially written and illustrated by the artist in 1995, inspired by Niccolo Machiavelli’s Renaissance treatise, THE PRINCE, the first book of political philosophy. Hart’s version began as a series of oil paintings and a small catalog, produced by the Realismus Studio, at the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin in 1995.
The catalog was eventually released as an expanded hardcover by Penguin USA in 1998, along with German and French editions.
While keeping to the meaning of the original, Hart rewrote THE PRINCE, reflecting street values and the voice of youth culture, as if Machiavelli’s book, meant to advise kings on seizing power, was a primer to teach good manners to small children.
"We are obviously in a period of cultural crisis, with the world slipping into autocracies, war in the Ukraine, and democracy dramatically destabilized in the USA. Social media is used to spread misinformation and engender fear and terror in order to manipulate the populace.
The little mottos that I wrote in the early nineties are more relevant now than ever. They seem to be pointedly directed at the cultural and political world of today. Yet when I wrote them, I felt that I was translating Machiavelli’s early 16th-century text into the politics of that time."
– Claudia Hart, June 2023
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CLAUDIA HART | A CHILD'S MACHIAVELLI

Claudia Hart is one of the most well-known female pioneers of digital art, with a career that began in the early 1990s. Starting by defining all that photography was not, the New York-based artist reimagined image-making in the early days of virtual reality. She pioneered what are now ubiquitous technologies: 3D rendering, printed sculptures, and virtual and augmented realities.

Hart’s influence on contemporary digital art is substantial. Her work is in prestigious collections and exhibitions such as, among others, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the THOMA Foundation, and is the cover image of Christiane Paul’s fourth edition of DIGITAL ART, published in May 2023. The book is considered to be the canon of digital art history.

DIGITAL ART HISTORY AND POST-PHOTOGRAPHY

CLAUDIA HART: "I AM NOT A FUTURIST", CONVERSATION WITH ANIKA MEIER PART I

Claudia Hart wrote her way into visual art. Leveraging her positions at ID and later at ARTFORUM, Hart took the opportunity to explore the obscure corners of design and contemporary art and became obsessed. Her obsession led to her curating an exhibition in 1984 about art and design crossover, an impulse that then swept the art scene. It was called HOUSE ON THE BORDERLINE, and was staged at White Columns, New York's oldest alternative non-profit space. The artists, curators, and writers she met—from the gallerist Holly Solomon to artists Dan Graham and Ericka Beckman—guided her. Hart's explorations led her to rediscover herself as an artist using multiple mediums, from the decorative arts to painting and animation. 

In the mid-1990s, Hart saw the movie TOY STORY at the Berlin Film Festival. It inspired her to animate A CHILD’S MACHIAVELLI (Penguin Edition, 1996), her most well-known illustrated book. This piece has lasting relevance. First because of its profound human theme—political strategy and the will to power—but also because the artist translated her version of Niccolò Machiavelli's Renaissance treatise THE PRINCE from one new technology into the next over the course of thirty years. 


CULTURE WARS AND ANIMATIONS

CLAUDIA HART: MIND AND BODY, CONVERSATION WITH ANIKA MEIER PART II

With a background in architecture and writing, Claudia Hart came into the spotlight in the 1990s as a multimedia artist  interested in investigating themes of representation and identity. Hart integrates subjects from art history, philosophy, and cultural studies to examine themes of feminism, embodiment, and temporality through symbolic poetics that embroider onto real-world politics. She does this by drawing on computing, virtual imaging, and 3D animation technologies. No matter the medium, Hart has made a name for herself by creating uncanny, mesmerising images.

In the third and final of three conversations with Anika Meier for EXPANDED.ART, Hart speaks about her journey from painting to animation, virtual reality, and NFTs; her background in architecture and its influence on her practise of creating uncanny images; and how Hart, as an artist of our time, sees the present.

UNCANNY IMAGES AND SIMULATIONS

CLAUDIA HART: ON VISION AND THE VISIONARY, CONVERSATION WITH ANIKA MEIER PART III

A CHILD’S MACHIAVELLI was initially written and illustrated by Claudia Hart in 1995. It was inspired by Niccolo Machiavelli’s Renaissance treatise, THE PRINCE, the first book of political philosophy.

A CHILD'S MACHIAVELLI 

CLAUDIA HART | GALLERY

25 APRIL - 14 MAY 2023 | BERLIN

THE CUTE SHOW

On the occasion of Gallery Weekend Berlin, EXPANDED.ART is pleased to present 

. More than 20 artists explore the duality of kitsch and its critique of modernity, technology, and online culture.

Bright, pastel-coloured fantasy worlds filled with unicorns, animals, and other fanciful creatures evoke feelings of tenderness and innocence. But is cuteness always this innocent? The rise of the aesthetic movement "cute" correlates directly with challenges of growing up and living in the digital age.

CHRIS DRANGE transforms digital found objects into classical oil paintings, questioning authorship and originality. With his post-digital paintings of puppies, Drange aims to convey his feelings when seeing a puppy to the viewer. Oftentimes exaggerated and adorned with kitschy emojis, Drange creates images of cuteness, irony, and oddity.

LEONIE SPECHT's work mirrors self-optimization, cuteness, and pop culture, inviting the viewer to be a part of a narrow microcosm between reality and fantasy. A subtle perversion that no longer seems suspicious is manifested in her paintings. Specht is looking for common ground where the ordinary and the uncanny merge.

Irony meets romantic longing in ALBRECHT/WILKE’s paintings. The artist duo interweaves formal elements, art historical quotations, and a lot of humour with the use of their key subject: the examination of the German middle class milieu and the associated clichés and insignia of Germanculture.

DANIEL GEBHART DE KOEKKOEK toys with the absurdity of everyday life, using his highly acclaimed talent for the good, the bad, and the ugly to create equally unpolished and cute images, as seen in his yearly animal calendars featuring dogs, guinea pigs, alpacas, and more.

CLARE KENNY’s balloon-shaped sculptures PARTY'S OVER and ALL HOT AIR replicate the slightly sad, semi-deflated balloons left behind long after a party has finished.

JOSEFINE SCHULZ explores the different realities of life and celebrates the unexcited, everyday moments of friendly togetherness in familiar situations. Schulz uses the symbol of the dog as a faithful and cute companion for her oftentimes lonely protagonists, thereby exploring the role of the dog invarious realities of life.

Queer sensitivities and the beauty of gestures and tiny details are explored in MARCIN LASZCZEWSKI’s series.Laszczewski depicts self-portraits of headless busts, a reflection of the sweet personal journey to self-discovery.

Inspired by the CUTEST DREAM, CEVIN PARKERuses soft pastels to reveal traces of memory and represent a sensitive reflection of the world without ego.

ISIS MARIA NIEDECKEN brings small moments of joy from the everyday onto the canvas, whileaiming to find the beauty in small moments and make them tangible for others.

Conceptual artist JINY LAN deals with urban life in the world's metropolises and questions the moral and traditional images of women in China in extensive series, while finding beauty in these topics.

In his hyper realistic sculptures, JOACHIM BOSSE deals with consumerism, the influences of mass media, and the impact of echo chambers and social eco-systems in the digital age. Bosse remixes pop culture and recontextualizes famous iconography in order to question contemporary identities and cultural values.

MATEUSZ VON MOTZ’s FUCK NORMAL I WANT MAGIC series has gone viral for providing an ironic and empathetic commentary on an increasingly narcissistic society. Von Motz combines text and images on mirrors, referring to the digital meme culture.

With his mirror JUST THE TWO OF US, ANDY KASSIER writes an over-dimensional love letter to his viewers. Kassier observes phenomena in social media and the development of digital image cultures. He searches for answers to currently socially relevant questions: What is happiness?

Digital native ARVIDA BYSTRÖM has an intrinsic relationship to pink. Exploring femininities and its complexities, often tied to online culture, she travels in an aesthetic universe of disobedient bodies, selfie sticks and cute fruits in lingerie.

THE CUTE PORTAL by NADINE KOLODZIEY is an innovative and immersive augmented reality artwork that takes viewers on a journey into a magical world of cuteness, kawaii, and wonder.

ARNO BECK’s pen plotter drawing plays on our nostalgia of early computer games of the 1990s, using neon colours and pixelated images. With a special process of bouncing between the digital and physical worlds, Beck finds himself in the middle of those.

Visual artist MARGARET MURPHY focuses on topics like femininity, sexuality, and identity in a post-social media culture. Murphy’s art uses bright colours, lighting, props, and cute aesthetic accents to create visceral responses within the viewer.

Artists: Albrecht/ Wilke, Arno Beck, Joachim Bosse, Arvida Byström, Chris Drange, Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek, Claudia Hart, Andy Kassier, Clare Kenny, Nadine Kolodziey, Jiny Lan, Marcin Laszczewski, Margaret Murphy, Isis Maria Niedecken, Skye Nicolas, Cevin Parker, Leonie Specht, Josefine Schulz, Mateusz von Motz, Ruohan Wang


25 APRIL - 14 MAY 2023
OPENING: 25 APRIL 2023 | 6-9 PM CET 
On the occasion of Gallery Weekend Berli.n

More than 15 artists explore the duality of kitsch and its critique of modernity, technology, and online culture. Bright, pastel-coloured fantasy worlds filled with unicorns, animals, and other fluffy creatures evoke feelings of tenderness and innocence. But is cuteness always this innocent? 

GROUP EXHIBITION

THE CUTE SHOW | SHOWROOM

8-23 MARCH 2024 | SHOWROOM

CLAUDIA HART: ECSTACY

EXPANDED.ART is delighted to present ECSTACY by Claudia Hart, her second solo exhibition, at the gallery in Berlin. On view will be a series of twelve unique movies with original sound, envisioning a hybrid female avatar trying out various strategies to escape virtuality.

Claudia Hart describes the evolution of ECSTASY, a journey of creativity in the post-digital age:

"ECSTACY is the endgame of a project that I evolved over the course of 12 years, taking several forms before assuming this most evolved identity. It is a process that I often go through—the experience that art sometimes takes a score of years before finding its place in the world. I originally made a version of the piece by collaborating with 24 of my students in 2012. I made a prototype for them to respond to, sharing the skeleton of a floating avatar with them for each to interpret in their own way, using their own avatar creations. At the same time, I made many variations of mine in twenty colours with different lighting and effects. That first version was shown in an exhibition at a museum in Korea. The show was called

BETTER THAN UNIVERSE, curated by Yoo Jinsang, at the Dague Media Art / ZKM collaborative space in Dague, Korea, in 2013/14.

I remade the piece in 2019, using the colourful variations that I had stored on a hard drive since 2012 but forgotten about. With them, I made a new edit and a new piece, but using the same music.

Seven years later, my former students were now grown, accomplished artists and professors, with many remaining close friends. When I retired from teaching, I showed it in Chicago at the School of the Art Institute Faculty Sabbatical Triennial, organized by Staci Boris, Director of Exhibitions there, at the School of the Art Institute Galleries, 2022. At that moment, that variant was called "Dark kNight"

Then last month, in 2024, I took the 2019 version, reinterpreting it yet again, changing colours and textures, to reformulate it into twelve short films.

The text below was written by the critic Roger Denson in 2012 about my prototype work, also shown in an exhibition called POST PICTURES at bitforms gallery in New York. Roger wrote the catalog for that show, which was also

 and excerpted below. I believe that their checkered history is the meaning of these twelve NFTs, a story about creativity, regeneration, and community."

"Dark kNight" is Hart's response to Christopher Nolan's 2012 film, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, depicting the attempt of one of her avatars to break free of the simulated world behind the screen. With "Dark kNight" (spelling intentional), Hart began a personal migration out of the sanctuary cocoon of her earlier automatons. She represents the attempt of this defiant one to break free of the simulated world behind the screen and describes it as a story about creativity and regeneratio

The popular Christopher Nolan film DARK KNIGHT RISES is a film about escape from imprisonment and the powers that determine who is and isn't to be imprisoned. With the film's two highly independent, physically athletic, and defiant female characters, both of whom have escaped their own entrapments, Hart was immediately prompted to envision her own restless, racially hybrid female avatar trying out various strategies to escape virtuality. In the video, we see her hurling herself against the screen, swinging from her feet by a rope and hitting the screen full body; catapulting like a human cannonball into the screen; and, as seen here, swinging with a rope by her hands and hitting the screen with her feet—all seen at various speeds. Hart claims the mythological source for the figure, besides Nolan's Batman, is the chained Prometheus, bound by the Olympian gods for bringing fire to humankind, as well as Michaelangelo's DYING CAPTIVES, who appear to struggle in their efforts to release themselves from their prisons of stone.


8-23 MARCH 2024
OPENING RECEPTION: 8 MARCH | 6-9 PM CET
Claudia Hart will be present. 

CLAUDIA HART: ECSTACY 8-16 MARCH 2024
ECSTACY by Claudia Hart is her second solo exhibition at the gallery in Berlin. On view is a series of twelve unique movies with original sound, envisioning a hybrid female avatar trying out various strategies to escape virtuality.
Claudia Hart describes the evolution of ECSTACY, a journey of creativity in the post-digital age:
"ECSTACY is the endgame of a project that I evolved over the course of 12 years, taking several forms before assuming this most evolved identity. It is a process that I often go through—the experience that art sometimes takes a score of years before finding its place in the world. I originally made a version of the piece by collaborating with 24 of my students in 2012. I made a prototype for them to respond to, sharing the skeleton of a floating avatar with them for each to interpret in their own way, using their own avatar creations. At the same time, I made many variations of mine in twenty colours with different lighting and effects. That first version was shown in an exhibition at a museum in Korea. The show was called BETTER THAN UNIVERSE, curated by Yoo Jinsang, at the Dague Media Art / ZKM collaborative space in Dague, Korea, in 2013/14."
EXPANDED.ART | SHOWROOM Friedrichstraße 67, 10117 Berlin

CLAUDIA HART | ECSTACY

VOICE GEMS x Claudia Hart

Claudia Hart's 3D animation MORE LIFE from 2000 is part of Sotheby's Natively Digital: An Ordinal Curated Sale. Bidding is open from 12 to 22 January 2024. Originally premiered in MOMA PS1’s ANIMATIONS, an early exhibition on CGI art in 2001, MORE LIFE underscores Hart’s continued interests in the political salience of the cyborg as a being that projects excess and challenges ideas of anthropocentrism, and in doing so, counters the techno-progressive, masculine, and extractivist dominions of technology.

ANIMATION AND ORDINALS

CLAUDIA HART: "I WANT MORE LIFE"

The exhibition showcases seven video projects that span two decades of the Claudia Hart’s creative output. In collaboration with Annka Kultys Gallery in London.


MY TRAVELS IN HYPERREALITY 

CLAUDIA HART | LONDON

ECSTACY by Claudia Hart is her second solo exhibition at the gallery in Berlin. On view will be a series of thirteen unique movies with original sound, envisioning a hybrid female avatar trying out various strategies to escape virtuality.


ECSTACY

CLAUDIA HART | SHOWROOM

18-23 APRIL 2023 | BERLIN

ALGORITHMIC EMPATHY. THE PROMISES OF AI

 
by Anika Meier & Margaret Murphy

EXPANDED.ART is pleased to present the group exhibition ALGORITHMIC EMPATHY. THE PROMISES OF AI in collaboration with VerticalCrypto Art in Berlin. 16 artists explore the vast potential of future relationships between AI and creative expression to hypothesize on the not-so-distant future.

In a world where technological advancements happen in the blink of an eye, AI is being pointed to in the cultural zeitgeist as an example of a potentially bleak and ominous future. It is worth considering, however, the ways computers and machine learning can push forward creativity, human connection and philosophical dialogues.



For a while now, the world has been feeling increasingly off-kilter. It’s familiar and deeply foreign simultaneously: wars, pandemics, conspiracies. Ideas we hold as true changing overnight. ANOTHER AMERICA by 

 is a reflection of this uncertain world. It shows us the familiar, but not. Set in the late 1940s, a time close to the beginning of photography, when a photograph was the truth. Finally, how else to address the idea of uncertainty than with the technology, Artificial Intelligence, that is making the world uncertain.

IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT by 

 reflects the dawn of a new era shaped by AI. Everything as we know it will change. We can no longer trust photography; the boundaries between fiction and reality have become fluid.


 explores the impact of technological progress, in concrete AI, and its influence on visual culture, featuring the horse as a central symbol. The artwork references its historical significance in the work of Eadweard Muybridge, where the horse served as an object for capturing the passage of time with photography and ultimately led to the development of motion pictures. Far explores the introduction of new technological players in the visual production process, specifically focusing on AI-generated images of horse races. PHOTO FINISH is created in two steps: first, an AI model trained on actual race photos generates a speed photo of a horse race; second, the pixels of the AI-generated image are dismantled and reorganized, reinstilling a sense of velocity.

 seeks to capture the visual essence of longing and the search for solace in the face of loss. Đurđević, inspired by the passing of her late father, uses AI to process her grief. The landscapes often feature small, distant figures and lost animals enveloped in a haze, symbolizing the arduous process of letting go and the emotional turmoil that arises from losing a loved one. Đurđević also showcases AI’s ability in reimagining the 19th-century photographic printing process known as gum bichromate. Each piece in this collection was crafted using solely AI algorithms, paying homage to the delicate balance of beauty and nostalgia that characterized the original process.




 is her subtle way of saying "I care about you and your future". When she stumbled by accident onto one of the ANGELS' outputs, she almost walked off, thinking they looked too real, too Teen Vogue. But the angels wouldn’t leave her mind. She remembered being a teenager and wanting to be taken seriously and not seen as an object of desire. "The treatment of women in the world remains horrendous. Abortion still being an issue today is primitive, disappointing, and infuriating. My heart goes out to all the young women and men, too, whose lives are manipulated as if they were mere puppets by self-serving hypocrites", Condo says.

AMARANTHINE REVERIES by 

 is a collection of AI-animated self-portrait videos exploring the boundaries between our physical bodies and the essence of who we are at our core. In Pritts’ practice using themselves as source material with AI, the artist finds that the AI feels much more empathetic to who they are than they do to themselves. The outputs are devoid of inner criticism and body dysmorphia, an unexpected but ultimately very liberating result.

ALGORITHMIC ZONES OF IMMATERIAL PICTORIAL SENSIBILITY by 

 presents noise nearing the possibility of empathy, deflected by the bias for form and the limitations of gender. They explore seven empty semantic zones in order to locate the possibility of sensitivity and sensibility in the latent space of a text-to-image diffusion model. This series uses object pronouns, which represent the recipients of actions, as a means to probe empathy. The resulting pictorial outputs expose a potential zone of sensibility in the model's latent space, as well as the barriers to that potential.

 deals with the binaries between man and woman, East and West, human and animal, and human and non-human intelligence that have been created to solidify colonial power infrastructures in the West. However, we often see in nature and beyond how these boundaries are always blurry. This collaborative work with AI connects ancestral and feminized aquatic mythologies through digital skins to reimagine future visions.

Combing artificial intelligence with the practices of magic and alchemy, DWELLERS BETWEEN THE WATERS by 

 seeks possible solutions in response to the traumas of contemporary anthropos and examines how artificial intelligence, in terms of artistic practice, remains integral to our contemporary condition, that is, the ever-evolving climate crisis and the sixth extinction of species, coupled with wars, inflation, and capitalist exploitations.




 is a glimpse into a large science complex that represents the big brain of AI. At least, that's how Nagler imagines it. Many small groups are working in multidisciplinary ways to try to answer the question of the exhibition: What are the promises of AI? The AI draws from a great wealth of knowledge and imagines itself. There are young groups that playfully work on synthetic-organic interfaces. There are holodeck levels on which final haptic tests are carried out. There are sleep labs where mind expansion and awareness reign supreme. For Nagler, working with AI is an alchemical process. Diverse and nuanced ingredients result in the expected or even more surprising results and artworks. It is supremely satisfying to take up a narration of your own.

 examines ChatGPT’s declarative arguments on why AI-created art is intellectually superior, using the prompt: “Provide a digital minimalist conceptual art piece making the argument why AI-created art is intellectually superior and why it should be minted as an NFT.” In the series THE INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY OF AI-CREATED ART, Nicolas extends his exploration of text-rich triptychs with META PROSE, a conceptual exercise in authorship using AI technology to produce artworks from a flowing stream of online collective consciousness.

YELLOW FILM, from the series ABSTRACT SPACE by 

, is a contemplative artwork built by queries asked of GPT3, answers obtained by manipulating images through GAN, and music generated by an AI. The artwork shows a minimalist space that narrates the void through the vision of a place in continuous transformation. The minimalist space is designed by the shadows of geometric volumes created by extruding the silhouette of the primitives along the direction of the light source. A new, vibrant place arises under the eyes of the viewers, oscillating between virtual and real perception.

ALGORITHMIC EMPATHY. THE PROMISES OF AI: 

 Anna Condo, Crosslucid, Marco DeAngelis, Olivera Đurđević, FAR, Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek, Veronica Kuri, Lars Nagler, Skye Nicolas, Chiara Passa, Ellie Pritts, Phillip Toledano, Mikey Woodbridge & Ezra Shibboleth, Ziyang Wu, Kira Xonorika



 18 APRIL | 6-9 PM CET | EXPANDED.ART | Friedrichstraße 67 | Berlin



The artists will join EXPANDED.ART and VerticalCrypto Art on Twitter to celebrate the launch of their NFTs, and to discuss their artworks and the promises of AI. 



The NFTs will be minted on Ethereum and Tezos and will be available to collect on VerticalCrypto Art. The artists will release 1/1s and limited editions created in collaboration with AI.

19 APRIL | 6 PM CEST | 12 PM ET | 9 AM PT


Anna Condo, Crosslucid, Lars Nagler, Kira Xonorika, Ellie Pritts, Marco DeAngelis, Mikey Woodbridge & Ezra Shibboleth, Olivera Đurđević

21 APRIL | 6 PM CEST | 12 PM ET | 9 AM PT


Skye Nicolas, Chiara Passa, Ziyang Wu, Veronica Kuri, Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek, FAR

In collaboration with VerticalCrypto Art. VCA is the curatorial house for art and culture on the blockchain, working across art, music and fashion. VCA empowers and elevates culture, through curation, redefining what contemporary culture is.

17 artists explore the vast potential of future relationships between AI and creative expression to hypothesize on the not-so-distant future through digital art, video art and AR. In collaboration with VerticalCrypto Art in Berlin.

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