Arteriors
The works in the Arteriors series present staged depictions of interiors that offer a glimpse into an imaginary private environment, curated through a distinctive selection of more or less well-known existing works of art. The works quoted within these interiors are not selected primarily according to aesthetic or decorative criteria, but rather on the basis of thematic and conceptual connections, thus following more closely the logic of a museum display. At the same time, even in the absence of any visible human figures, the arrangements of objects bring the imaginary inhabitants of these interiors vividly to life. It is almost as if collectors had written a psychogram of themselves through their art acquisitions and the way they furnish their homes.
The frames of these works are inspired by the Good Paintings series by American artist Neil Jenney, who similarly employs dominant wooden frames to evoke the impression of a window opening onto a landscape. In the Arteriors, however, the direction of the gaze is reversed: from looking out to looking in, offering a view into a private environment characterized by its own particular selection of quoted works of art. These pictures can therefore be understood not only as windows, but also as mirrors and, not least, as monitors or screens, which are likewise most often set within black frames.
Cultural Disharitage
The works in the Cultural Disharitage series depict invented vases, which Matthias Wollgast developed by working with an AI-driven image generator. The creative process begins with deliberately steering the generator through suitable prompts, i.e. input commands in the form of brief image descriptions, followed by selecting suitable results from a large number of generated images. The selected motifs are then realised and artistically developed by hand, in the conventional way. The result is thus a unique work whose title allows conclusions to be drawn about the keywords underlying the original prompt. On the whole, the resulting depictions of vases seem possible and visually plausible, especially since their translation into painting further obscures the digital origin of the motifs. At the same time, Wollgast exposes their artificial nature by deliberately choosing to develop images that, on the one hand, carry ironic ruptures in their content and, on the other, purposefully incorporate “errors” specific to the creation of motifs by an image generator, such as bodily deformation, the fusion of pictorial elements, or nonsensical lettering.
Cultural Disharitage thus addresses the impact of digital image culture on the perception of inherited cultural heritage and its place in collective memory. Across temporal and cultural boundaries, AI effortlessly combines content that may have little or nothing in common in terms of its origins, and feeds it back into its own system, where it becomes the basis for renewed recombination and interpretation. How many loops of repetition, and what span of digital development, will it take until our cultural memory has been altered to such an extent that the resulting dispossession makes it impossible to adequately trace actual cultural development? In online research, at least, we already drift all too easily into murky waters populated by countless cultural, historical and semantic chimeras. The origin of thoughts and ideas recedes in favour of their reach and connectivity, and vanishes into the digital fog of infinite recursion.
Daily Vessels
In the Daily Vessels, motifs drawn from the daily press are transposed onto vases, where they are both aesthetically elevated and conceptually reframed, referencing ancient vessels as historical documents of everyday life. The images are reproduced true to the originals and accompanied by source attributions that underscore their direct relation to contemporary global events.
This approach stands in clear opposition to the works of synthetikoús mýthous and the Cultural Disharitage series: AI-generated, fictitious vase images devoid of any genuine historical reference. Despite this, they deliberately cite familiar forms and visual languages, thereby constructing artificial myths that put our cultural memory to the test.
figures
In Wollgast’s figures, fragments of disembodied limbs and isolated objects appear to be reproductions of well-known sculptures by Constantin Brâncuși and Umberto Boccioni, Bruce Nauman and Paul McCarthy. In fact, he constructs the images as contact prints of handmade negatives made of transparent film, graphite and spray paint. By removing the camera from the photographic process and then hand-colouring certain compositions or areas, Wollgast emphasises the role of the reproduced image in the circulation of otherwise unique art objects. Being at once second-hand copies and one-of-a-kind creations, the works disrupt the aura of uniqueness that often clings to the original artwork. With his postcards, Wollgast goes one step further. By re-adopting the publication and distribution format of the mass media, this tactic of appropriation is confirmed only by the artist’s name on the back of the card.
KW
The series KW consists of depictions of labeled wooden drawers, each containing a selection of headlines from leading international daily newspapers, mostly from the Western world. KW stands for "Kalenderwoche" (calendar week), and the title of each piece in the series is supplemented by the corresponding calendar week (e.g., KW 14).
The cited newspapers include the American The New York Times, the Chinese China Daily, the British Financial Times, the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the German Die Zeit and Die Frankfurter Allgemeine, and the French Le Monde.
What is the relationship between daily news and reports from newspapers to history and current events? Are they ‘History in the Making,’ or merely fleeting moments of human perception and interpretations of what may or may not be happening around us?
The highly selective depiction of current events through the chosen, already abbreviated and interpretive headlines is further deprived of objectivity by the entirely subjective selection made solely by the artist. Nevertheless, these are all complete, original quotes from a given ‘Moment in Time,’ and their origin remains absolutely transparent and traceable through the additional specification of the newspaper and its issue. By suggesting a possible personal connection through the artist’s particular selection of quotes, the viewer is all the more prompted to reflect on their own thoughts. What should they ultimately imagine as the possible content of the labeled drawers? What may have actually happened? And what does it have to do with them personally, this current event, the moment of many or of an individual In the moment of shared existence?
synthetikoús mýthous
The works of the synthetikoús mýthous form a distinct body of work that emerged from the Cultural Disharitage series: AI-generated, fictitious vase images devoid of any genuine historical reference. Despite this, they deliberately cite familiar forms and visual languages, thereby constructing artificial myths that put our cultural memory to the test.
