MARIUS SPERLICH | GALLERY

On the occasion of Gallery Weekend Berlin, EXPANDED.ART is delighted to present SPIEGELBILDER: CLOWNS by Marius Sperlich, his first solo exhibition, at the gallery. 

SPIEGELBILDER: CLOWNS is an exploration of artificial intelligence as a reflection of all human progress and knowledge.

"Did you ever wonder what toying with insanity looks like?

I created a photography style that mimics surreal paintings using only analog effects. 0% Editing. Real photography made so complex that it's impossible to replicate, even for A.I.

In the process of creating a single artwork, thousands of images need to be taken. It's like finding a needle in a haystack. As soon as you move even a millimeter, the image changes a hundredfold. Often, you see the desired image in the viewfinder and then lose it again because you blink or exhale and lose focus again. The exhibition is the result of 150.000 images taken by me.

The workflow feels like an algorithm giving you a thousand options per second. You just need to find the right image. The entire project follows Einstein's quote: 'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.'

In this case, we always get different results, but only one image from each session can be chosen. The infinite search for aesthetics and form by a perfectionist is almost a form of masochism, a mental and spiritual exercise testing my own limits—edging on insanity.

At what point is an image recognizable, and when is it too abstract, melted, or unclear?"

SPIEGELBILDER: CLOWNS by Marius Sperlich, navigates on this narrow line, dealing with the learning of algorithms and AI, whose images become clearer as they receive more training data, and the increasingly unclear image of humans in technological progress.