Mathias Vef & friends UNCANNY – Fascination and Unease

Mathias Vef & friends   UNCANNY – Fascination and Unease

nüüd.berlin gallery introduces Mathias Vef as the gallery’s new artist with the exhibition ‘Uncanny’ from 28 June 2024. In his works, the artist explores the interplay of body and identity, inspired by people who look at their bodies experimentally. Through photography, video and 3D scans, he deconstructs these bodies and uses artificial intelligence to create new surreal works that reflect the ambiguity of being human in the age of AI and synthetic reality. These works are contrasted with works by other artists to create a multi-layered field of discussion.

Mathias Vef explores the fascinating interplay of body and identity with the help of people who see their bodies as something changeable. For him, this fluidity is the means of human existence. Through photography, videos and 3D scans, he collects danced forms of ballet dancers, digitally manipulated bodybuilders, transpersons or portraits of sex workers, which he transforms and digitally collages with the help of chemical substances. With these embodiments, he creates fascinatingly surreal images, collages and choreographies that offer a utopian view of our existence.

Another look at our existence is taken by Mathias Vef through the supposed utopias of new technologies and AI. With his Uncanny works, he comes extremely close to the synthetic, in a physical sense, but there remains an inner distance. For as fascinating as the new appears, it often harbours an uncanny strangeness. This ambiguity, this oscillation between fascination and unease, utopia and dystopia, real and AI-generated bodies will manifest itself physically in the ‘Uncanny’ exhibition.

In order to depict this complex field of tension, Mathias Vef has invited other artists – Jonathan Armour, Benedikt Groß, Olaf Hajek, Deni Horvatić, Thomas Kutschker, Nicole Srock.Stanley, Rein Vollenga – to enter into a dialogue with their works. For example, the sculptures by Rein Vollenga add a further dimension to the utopian physicality and completely new works have been created in co-operation with the painter Olaf Hajek. Finally, the gallery is presenting the NUCA project, which has already attracted international attention, to the public for the first time: the first camera to produce live nude images. The AI-supported technology was developed together with Benedikt Groß.

Mathias Vef  (*1976 in Wiesbaden) studied at the Royal College of Art in London after starting out in the natural sciences. Since 1998, he has been researching the body and identity and realising these artistically in photographs, videos and 3D scans, among other things. He is internationally recognised with numerous awards and residencies. The NUCA project with Benedikt Groß thematises generative AI and its effects on image reproduction. His works are exhibited worldwide. Mathias lives and works in Berlin.

Further information about Mathias Vef you find here.

& friends

Jonathan Armour is an Irish artist based in London, fusing a first degree in Engineering with a Masters in Fine Art. His practice is an interplay between the mediums of oil painting and time-based digital, feeding off an underlying urge to make the pixel more visceral. Armour’s creative focus is an enquiry of the body and human condition – with a particular fascination with the skin, which he sees as an interface between the person within and the world around us. His digital work centres on collaboration with actual people to explore aspects of what/who they are, thus, there is a realness which feeds the rich imagery. Creatively, Armour’s roots are firmly planted in the Renaissance when the exploration of the body was led by artists. Nurtured by an interest in Sci-Fi and transhumanism, those roots have grown, bypassing the Enlightenment, feeding on a few 20th and 21st century artists, and up to the present moment – exploring the near future evolution of humans.

Further information about Jonathan Armour you find here.

The video Sleeve Shock is in part a reflection about the amazing people the artist is fortunate enough to work with and how their sleeves have been the source of exclusion by the art establishment for many centuries – indeed perhaps only now starting to be corrected. These are the individuals who bravely lent the artist their skins for the Birth Sleeves exhibition in October 2022. Taken from Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, sleeves are the term used for bodies that serve as a receptacle for the human consciousness. The body an individual is born with is called their Birth Sleeve. A recurring theme in Transhumanist thinking is that one day we will be able to upload our human consciousness into some form of device which can then be relocated into a new body (re-sleeved), whether naturally born, modified or artificially created, as required or desired. When an individual is re-sleeved they often experience a degree of Sleeve Shock. The more foreign the sleeve is in comparison to the individual’s Birth Sleeve, in terms of age, race, gender etc, the more intense the shock. Whilst we are not living in 2384, the year of Altered Carbon, this does provide us with a future-retro perspective on aspects of identity conflict felt by so many of us.

Fusing ideas of avatars and matryoshka dolls, this work is also a playful exploration of how we all have multiple identities. In this case, unlike the matryoshka dolls, the different layers coalesce, interfere, protrude, and merge with each other, akin to how our different identities are foregrounded in particular contexts. Soundscape was created by jjjacob from his Body Without Organs album. All rights reserved to jjjacob.

Jonathan and Mathias both explore those sleeves of quite special and extraordinary people, as Jonathan says people who might have been excluded from the outward for centuries because of these extraordinary skin, because of their Uncanniness.

Benedikt Groß (* 1980 in Bad Saulgau) is a designer and works across disciplines. He is Professor of Interaction & Strategic Design at the Schwäbisch Gmünd University of Applied Sciences and is one of the heads of the KITeGG / Gestaltung.ai project, a BMBF-funded research project focussing on AI in design education. He works at the interface of people, technology and futures within the Bermuda triangle of design futuring, generative design and data analysis.

Please find further information on Benedikt Groß here.

Benedikt Groß and Mathias Vef created the speculative design and art project NUCA. The project aims to provoke and question the current trajectory of generative AI in reproducing body images. NUCA is an AI-powered camera that redefines image creation. NUCA captures individuals in their purest form – no clothing, literally stripped down to their authentic selves in their natural state.

A camera that renders people completely naked? Ever fantasized about Superman’s X-Ray Vision? NUCA brings that childhood dream (of many boys) to life, challenging our perceptions of privacy and exposure. The project wants to explore what that “dream” coming true could mean and explore this new scenario together with you. Unlike other deepfakes, the NUCA device ties creator and subject physically together, and shows the result immediately. It so takes away the anonymity that is inherent to internet deepfakes and contrasts playfulness with this nightmarish trend.

NUCA is a speculative consumer product and not meant to be used uncontrolled in “the wild”. The generated images are not used in any way, except with explicit consent given. To ensure the safety of minors, the project is exclusively for adults.

NUCA has already sparked diverse reactions, ranging from fears of AI’s bias towards body cult and beauty mania to enthusiasm for its celebration of natural human beauty and form. This project prompts a crucial discussion on AI’s potential, emphasizing consent, algorithmic fairness, and the societal impacts of AI-generated imagery.

The current NUCA prototype is a 3d-printed camera (19.5 × 6 × 1.5 cm, 430g). The device is equipped with a 37 mm wide angle lens and an ergonomic grip. The viewfinder displays the input image and can be configured to show some of the input parameters,m e.g. pose detection in real-time. By pressing the trigger, the camera will create an estimated natural nude representation of the person being photographed. The inputs of the generative image process are the photo, the person’s pose (estimated skeleton) and the landmarks of the person’s face. The input photo is being analyzed by a custom classifier on 45 identifiers on gender, age, ethnicity, expression, hair, glasses, body shape etc. These ratings are then being used to generate a base image by formulating a prompt for a text-to-image AI (Stable Diffusion). The base image is a generic estimation of a nude person fulfilling this prompt. In the last step the image is then being individualized by taking the person’s face and pose into account in the final development of the nude portrait.

Further information you find here.

Olaf Hajek (*1965 in Rendsburg) studied graphic design at the University of Applied Sciences in Düsseldorf and began working as a freelance artist early on. As a technically perfect illustrator, he creates magical compositions in which he playfully interweaves motifs from flora and fauna with symbols, figures and ornaments. He gathers inspiration for his lively and detailed works primarily on his travels. African folklore, Indian temple art and South American pop culture can be found in his almost surreal tableaux. His works have been exhibited in solo exhibitions in Hamburg, Munich, Berlin, Atlanta, Buenos Aires, Shanghai, Paris and Cape Town. Olaf lives and works in Berlin and Palma de Mallorca.

Please find more information about Olaf Hajek here.

Olaf Hajek’s vibrant compositions in oil combining elements from flora and fauna, symbols, figures, and ornaments from African folklore, Indian temple art or Mexican Pop culture were always really inspiring for Mathias. For the exhibition UNCANNY they started to collaborate in an unusual way, feeding an AI with Olaf’s work, manipulating the AI with Mathias’s work and feeding the results back into Olaf’s mind and in oil onto the wood.

Deni Horvatić (*1991 in Čakovec, Croatia) is an artist specialising in photography, video art and CGI. He has been honoured with the Marina Viculin Award for excellence in Croatian photography and his works from the SCAN series have been exhibited at Miroslav Kraljevic Gallery (2020) and the 36th Youth Salon, Zagreb (2022) as well as at nüüd.berlin gallery, UNSEEN Amsterdam 2023, Rovinj Photodays and photo basel 2024. Deni lives and works in Čakovec, Croatia.

Further information about Deniv Horvatić you can find here.

In his AR work ‘Invitation’, Deni Horvatić explores the multi-faceted journey of self-discovery during adolescence, exploring the complexities of conforming to societal expectations and the pursuit of universal acceptance. The project incorporates a dual dimension – both tangible and augmented – allowing the viewer to immerse themselves in augmented reality by scanning a woollen rug with a QR code linked to the printed image. The image was created using 3D software by 3D scanning the model in different poses. These poses were combined by the artist to create the final rendered image. In the context of the exhibition, this work is also about the “identity” of the individual.

Thomas Kutschker is a trained photographer and filmmaker. He is interested in the deceptive nature of human memory, the questioning of seemingly objective depiction and the breaking up of the technically perfect surface of images. His work repeatedly explores the boundaries between photographic and filmic images. His experimentation with AI is a consistent continuation of this. d/m/w shows portraits of people who do not exist. The requirement to create a diverse person reflects on the one hand the clichés of the trained AI and the people who made the further selection – and on the other hand challenges the perception and judgement of the viewer. His works are represented in collections and at festivals and have received international recognition. He lives in Berlin and Cologne.

Please find more information on Thomas Kutschker here.

Nicole Srock.Stanley studied design, art and interior architecture in Hanover and London. After completing her studies, she founded the dan pearlman Group in 1999, a group of owner-managed, strategic creative agencies based in Berlin, of which she is CEO. Her artistic work is characterised by textiles, which she often transforms into strong creations using tufting, a technique for producing textile surfaces with a pile layer. Nicole Srock.Stanley lives and works in Berlin.

Coming from digital and AI work and exploring an often quite masculine sphere,  Mathias was very fascinated by Nicole’s tufted carpets, drawings and her feminist perspective. Feminism should be all but uncanny, so to bridge the remains of Uncanniness, we invited her to join the exhibition. Furthermore Mathias tried to bridge and fuse their creativity by letting her practice inspire him to some quite unusual new AI work.

Rein Vollenga (*1979 in Geldorp, Netherlands) studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Den Bosch, Netherlands. His works have been presented in collaboration with the choreographer Damien Jalet at the Louvre in Paris and in numerous group exhibitions at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, the Kunsthalle in Oslo, the Mudac in Lausanne, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Galleria Delle Carozze in Florence, as well as in collaboration with fashion designers such as KTZ and Mugler and music performers such as Lady Gaga and Hercules & Love Affair. He lives and works in Berlin.

You find more information about Rein Vollenga here.

Rein Vollenga’s sculptures add another physical dimension to the uncanny utopian corporeality of the exhibition.

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