April 20, 2022, 2 PM
Many thanks to artist liaison Sigrid Hermann introducing our participants to the gallery concept, program & history of Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler and guiding us through the solo exhibition RIGGED by Pieter Schoolwerth. The visit is part of the BAI Studio Program | Berlin Artist Residency, Art School, Arts Incubator, and Live Online Courses & Classes.
Exhibition Dates: February 12– May 07, 2022
Location: Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler
Opening Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 – 6 PM
Address: Kohlfurter Straße 41/43, 10999 Berlin
“The word ‘rigged‘ is a vivid monosyllable during an age of discontents. Used equally in the US by the alt-right and far left, the term is tossed promiscuously at any system that seems unfair and fraudulent (which is to say, a lot of them). ‘Rigged‘ captures a slurry of disempowerment and frustration, a fear that we’re not the protagonists of our own stories, but rather playthings for shadowy tech billionaires who tug our strings and make us dance.
Pieter Schoolwerth’s latest painting series, Rigged, gives form to this collective delirium in a two-part exhibition at Kraupa Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin and Petzel Gallery, New York. At stake is how we see the world and ourselves in an age of hyper-mediation, in which subjectivity is a constant visual exercise in construction and manipulation. Schoolwerth presents tableaux of figures whose exteriors collapse away from blank, mannequin-like husks: in one painting, a couple liquefies into wavy noodles inside a Vegas love suite. In another, a man’s face stretches tautly across the hide of a unicorn. Schoolwerth employs computer-generated imagery (CGI) to literally detach a person’s outside from their inside, a splitting of public presentation from private interiority. These animations produce the support onto which Schoolwerth layers a digital rendering of a relief modelling the painting’s space, and, finally, impasto paint. Faces are given dramatic gestural painting treatment, exaggerating their countenances in size and affect: Modern painting and social media share a preoccupation with the face as a stand-in for an expressive gestalt. Exuberant and artificial, programmatic yet barely regulated, CGI promises an expressive free-for-all governed by endless reproduction. In short: This is deepfakes gone wild.” (Text excerpt from the press release by courtesy of Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler & Lucy Hunter)
More information on the Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler Website.
