LBBW Collection
Digital Traces – Art in the Age of Digitalisation
Digitalisation has fundamentally changed our communication, the question of reality and fake news, as well as authorship and creativity. Artists are responding to this by using digital technologies not only as tools, but also as subjects of artistic reflection. The collection presentation shows how diverse these explorations can be: from computer-generated templates and AI-generated imagery to the transfer from analogue to digital and vice versa, to questions about the influence of the digital world.
At a time when digital technologies, artificial intelligence, social media and virtual reality are shaping our world, art is becoming a resonance chamber for a society in transition – and a place where the digital can be experienced with the senses.
The collection presentation is dedicated to the influence of digitalisation on contemporary art: as a tool, a theme and a social reality. On display are works that explore the tension between humans and computer technology and in which ‘digital traces’ become visible. Against the backdrop of artificial intelligence being able to generate images that are virtually indistinguishable from those created by human hands, the presentation also shows how artists use or reflect on digital tools, making it clear that humans are not being replaced in the creative process, but rather challenged.
Albert Oehlen is one of the pioneers of using digital techniques in his painting. As early as the 1990s, he experimented with simple computer programmes as a means of achieving a new form of abstraction. The resulting visual worlds of lines, patterns and disturbances became the starting point for his paintings. The generated motifs were enlarged and transferred to canvas, and large-format paintings were created using additional techniques of gestural painting in oil and spray paint. The computer did not serve as a substitute, but rather as a tool that introduced a certain aesthetic, limitation and regularity into the artistic process.
Artist Mary-Audrey Ramirez drew inspiration from the world of computer gaming culture. As a passionate gamer, she incorporates references to gaming and the virtual world into her latest textile works. To do this, she uses text-to-image AI to create crazy scenarios and cute to creepy fantasy creatures.
AI is also used by artists Manuel Graf and Andreas Greiner and implemented with the help of new technological processes. The aesthetics of Manuel Graf's locomotives are also based on a text-to-image generator, which creates a large number of images in response to a specific request, from which he selects motifs and creates 3D prints. Graf sees AI as a tool that enriches creative processes, but also encourages reflection on our future. AI as a fear of the future, but also a belief in progress – like the railway once did, bringing change and progress.
Andreas Greiner's work also examines technological progress and its effects. He creates his apocalyptic motifs using the AI software Midjourney. Greiner uses computer circuit boards (printed circuit boards for electronic devices) as image carriers.
Morgaine Schäfer combines analogue and digital photography to explore questions of identity, memory and origin. In her series magnify, she digitises her father's slides from the 1970s with her mobile phone camera, selects image details and photographs the smartphone – thus digitally “zooming” into the past of her own family history.
Avery Gia Sophie Schramm translates digital image cultures into painting. Her works begin on the internet: memes, GIFs and logos, fragile carriers of collective emotions and political commentary, are brought together on the computer to form complex compositions and then transferred to canvas using traditional oil painting techniques. In this way, the fleeting images of the internet are transformed into lasting oil paintings. Schramm's works are reflections on meme culture as a mirror of social tensions and identity discourses, and at the same time on the new power of images in the digital age.
LBBW Collection
With more than 3,000 works, Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW) owns one of Germany's largest corporate collections of modern and contemporary art. Since its inception, the collection has been seen as part of the bank's cultural commitment and a visible demonstration of its social responsibility.
It spans more than fifty years of collecting and brings together national and international artistic positions. Today, the focus is on works created in Germany or by German artists within the last decade. The collection is open to all media: paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, media art and installations reflect the diversity of contemporary art production.
Thematically, the collection focuses on socially relevant issues of our time. These include topics such as globalisation, economisation, digitalisation, identity, nature and the environment. The collection thus offers a platform for discourse – both within the company itself and with the public.
Through thematically conceived trade fair presentations, the bank aims to actively engage in dialogue with the public – and at the same time make a social contribution to cultural education.