Installation views, Galerie Anita Beckers at Art Cologne 2023, Photos by GRAYSC

Hall 11.2

Booth A-410

ARMIN BOEHM

DANIEL CANOGAR

JONAS ENGLERT

JOHANNA REICH

ARMIN BOEHM, *1972

Boehm’s paintings are dedicated to the conflicts and distortions of contemporary (Western) societies, with a particular focus on the power of social media. He transfers the subjects of memes, hate images and activist image formats into an oil painting enriched with textile elements, combining them in a virtuoso and provocative manner to create a panopticon of motifs of political ideologization and radicalization. Apocalyptic fears and thoughts of the night characterize the mood of Boehm’s paintings no differently than those of his 20th century predecessors like Georg Grosz or Otto Dix. Armin Boehm lives and works in Berlin (GER).

DANIEL CANOGAR, *1964

Canogar’s dataworks are an attempt to capture, and cognitively process, the implications of these dramatic changes through examining the position occupied by the individual in a technologically interconnected age. Next to the works Abacus and Phloem, Chyron belongs to the Pixelweaver series, which draws on textiles as a metaphor for the social fabric created, and sometimes destroyed, by data. These artworks pay tribute to the close relationship between information technology and textiles, beginning with the jacquard’s loom in the early nineteenth century, considered by many historians to be the first computer. For this new series, Daniel Canogar has developed a virtual loom based on craft techniques. This algorithmic tool enables the creation of a wide range of patterns from different sources or „spools“. Chyron is rendered with the chyrons of news channels. The tickers intertwine like a large frayed fabric, a tangle that evokes the fragile and at times unstable balance of an information ecosystem created from disparate and even conflicting sources. Updated in real time, this algorithmic artwork features chyrons of major international news channels, including CNN, Fox News, MSNBC News, Bloomberg, BBC News, Reuters, CNBC, Al Jazeera and Le Monde. Daniel Canogar lives and works in Madrid (ESP) and Los Angeles (USA).

JONAS ENGLERT, *1989

In reference to the Mnemosyne panels by Aby Warburg, Declaration of Principles reflects the pictorial referentiality of the iconic scene performed by Yasser Arafat, Bill Clinton and Yitzhak Rabin in the course of the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements on September 13, 1993 in Washington, D.C. Using both moving and static found footage, the work recontextualizes this political staging in an altar-like polyptych, draws connections, both evident and obscured, and deconstructs the pictorial authenticity of an event, that, in order to become a historical image, draws on an iconography and rhetoric, that mediate between Concordia and Maphorion, going back as far as the antique. Declaration of Principles is about the temporality, mediatedness and intertextuality and thus the fundamental questioning of the singularity and originality not only of this specific scene, but of the image in general. The artistic works of Jonas Englert explore the in-between while eluding a formally clear classification. Thus, they often move on the borders of fiction and documentation, of cinematic moving image and photography, oscillating between theatrical staging and precise analysis. In terms of content, Englert’s videos and multimedia works are dedicated to the human being – as an individual and in its social interaction. Jonas Englert lives and works in Frankfurt am Main (GER).

JOHANNA REICH, *1977

Johanna Reich deals with the transformation of writing systems as a result of digital change. Since 2020, she has been working with language models that generate poems with the help of machine learning. Language shapes our thinking. Language shapes our understanding of the world and changes it. Until now, language has been developed and used by humans. The artist poses the question of how our world will change if A.I. takes over our language production in all areas changing the world of communication and power profoundly. In her works, Johanna Reich combines contemporary techniques such as photography, video, performance and holographic projections with traditional media such as painting and sculpture. A central element of her work is her performative acting in front of the camera. A recurring motif in her works, however, is the disappearance from the media-determined world, the artist’s own withdrawal. Johanna Reich lives and works in Cologne (GER).