Botticelli-Grey

The Berlin Gemäldegalerie invited American artist Michael Joaquin Grey to choose one of the well-known Renaissance portraits in the museum's collection and produce a contemporary artistic reaction to the work. Grey chose Sandro Botticelli's painting "Simonetta Vespucci" (ca. 1475). The portrait is the basis for the computer generated work "Between Simonetta", which slowly but continuously alters the portrait by means of an algorithmic program, calculating ever-new combinations. Questions arising from this work - of likeness and ideal, of authenticity, temporality and the transformation of the image - lie at the centre of the catalogue. The artist at once thematizes the paradigms of human perception and explores the genesis of the face as a constructive, self-reflexive process.