With Morehshin Allahyari & Daniel Rourke, Banz & Bowinkel, Nico Dockx, Herbert W. Franke, Lina Hermsdorf, Kristoffer Josefsson, Musæus &AE, Niko Princen, Michael Staniak, Analisa Teachworth, Jonas Wendelin and Euan Williams.

Curated by Ursula Ströbele & Andreas Greiner

Evolutionary Urge 24h Sculpture (Digital / Virtual) brings together artists that work in the field of digital, virtual and immaterial phenomena of sculpture. These sculptural boundaries question the traditional qualities of statue-like properties, its durability, haptique and its anthropomorphic ambitions, which are being scrutinized in favor of temporal, performative and interactive concepts. Already in the 1960s, Herbert W. Franke, one of the most influential pioneers of computer graphics and digital art, sought to expand the boundaries of sculpture towards the virtual space: “Could the computer lead us also in new areas of sculptures? A way to find an answer is to ignore the mentioned conditions for physical realization and try to design not realizable 3D- forms.”

The exhibition focuses on works, that align themselves less with tradition but rather with new scientific findings and digital technology, e.g. virtual reality, artificial intelligence, digital image processe, and 3D printing. Evolutionary Urge 24h Sculpture (Digital / Virtual) shows, how young artists today have further developed the idea of sculpture with these new sculptural tools and how they address contemporary phenomena, such as limited natural resources, the exponential growth of data traffic, which becomes currency itself, and the digitalization of human communication. This also changes the relevant discourse of sculpture.