Kamila B. Richter
Zuck-Err-DNA-A
Artist
Kamila B. Richter
(1976, Olomouc), Czech
Original Title
Zuck-Err-DNA-A
Date2022
MediumLarge photo Kodak Endura matt XL
Diasec® Face glossy 4 mm for counter-lamination
Counter-lamination with aluminium composite plate 4 mm
Aluminium support rails "System Grieger 65"
Dimensions200 × 160 cm
Classificationsprints
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
DescriptionKamila B. Richter is a painter and multimedia artist of Czech origin whose work is a reaction to rapid technological evolution. During the late 1990s, she became interested in the possibilities of visualizing the flows of data which surround our everyday life and permeate our daily communications, work, and social life, yet remain unseen. Her distinctive work combines traditional and innovative artistic techniques and mediums—Richter understands this fusion as an authentic mirror of reality. One of her common techniques is classical painting using amber resin oil, through which she represents changing interpretations of the real and the virtual world, both influenced by data transmission. Her work is inspired by digital images and frequencies, which she captures using her old Sony Ericsson K800i mobile phone. The outputs of the phone’s camera are unpredictable: on some occasions, it produces low-resolution video footage in accordance with the company’s stated specifications; other times, the result are clustered pixels and recordings with distorted colours. These disintegrated raster patterns with varied levels of defocusing become blueprints for Richter’s portrayal of a deformed surrounding reality. She selects individual frames from the footage she captures, subsequently spending months recreating them as oil paintings; in doing so, she connects layers of reality diluted by flawed algorithms and imbues them with immense depth. The resulting artworks are therefore conservative and analogue yet simultaneously innovative and digital. She usually translates her psychedelic images onto the canvas via the traditional process of applying thin, glazy layers in week-long intervals, focusing on the effects produced by different lighting dependent to the time of day and angle of viewing. Using this technique, Richter captures both the everyday urban hustle and bustle and intimate portraits and self-portraits. Since 2005, she has been creating audio-visual video installations with her partner Michael Bielický, which incorporate statistical data from global databases and communicatory pictograms from web browsers.
This aluminium print is part of the series Zuck-Err-DNA-A (Project #13021, 2022), which comprises portraits of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. Richter created this series of portraits in reaction to Zuckerberg’s announcement about the transition of the original Facebook website into the Metaverse. These works represent her critical stance toward Zuckerberg’s idea of the Metaverse as the future of the internet, virtualizing our lives by transferring interpersonal communication into a collective, three-dimensional cyberspace. Richter printed his portrait onto Kodak’s high-end Endura photographic paper, which is suitable for high-quality artistic prints. Subsequently, she used the patented Diasec technique to cover these grainy digital portraits in a four-millimetre-thick layer of acrylic, making them resistant to mechanical damage and ultraviolet light. The inspiration for these oversized portraits were digital artifacts and what she calls “Err videos” from her old, worn-out Sony Ericsson K800i mobile phone. As she photographed Zuckerberg, the phone produced a new visual malfunction resulting in a pronounced vertical structure. The technologically distorted portrait intersected with her theoretical insight into the contemporary medialized world, thus imbuing the work with a powerful cultural-critical dimension as Richter views Zuckerberg as the face of voluntary social exploitation, where the user becomes a product used for increasing profits while national laws and ethical norms are disregarded. She thus uses these deformed portraits to spotlight the negative aspects of Facebook, which also functions as a space for disseminating stereotypes and fake news and provides a platform for non-ethical groups threatening to destabilize democracy. These works therefore draw attention to the unwillingness of Facebook to filter out untruthful information. Richter sees the incipient transition to the Metasystem, which will integrate various different functions, as a grave danger with unpredictable consequences.
Apart from making these physical prints, Richter also collaborated with Alex Wagner and Michael Bielický to create 150 differently modified NFT portraits which continuously deconstruct and regenerate themselves. Each portrait is unique and, similarly to the logic of Facebook’s algorithms, the digital DNA of each individual artwork unpredictably changes. These NFT files digitally replicate the gene expression of chromosome 1, as documented by the Human Genome Project.
Kamila B. Richter (born 1976, Olomouc) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in 2001, and later, in 2010, completed her doctorate at the same institution. Between 2000 and 2002, she lived in South Africa and studied at the Technikon Natal in Durban. She currently lives and works between Düsseldorf and Karlsruhe. Richter has exhibited her work in Havana (11th Havana Biennial, 2012), Moscow (2011), Sevilla (Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla, 2008), Bad Rothenfelde (LichtSicht 4, Gradierwerk-Projektion, Projektionsbiennale, 2013; LichtSicht 6, Gradierwerk-Projektion, Projektionsbiennale, 2017), Düsseldorf (Über das Morgen hinaus, Museum Kunstpalast, 2014), Karlsruhe (YOU-ser, ZKM, 2007, YOU-ser 2, ZKM, 2009; Notation, ZKM, 2009; Global Contemporary, ZKM, 2011; GLOBALE, ZKM, 2015; Global Control and Censorship, ZKM, 2015; Open Codes, ZKM, 2017), Florence (Declining Democracy, Palazzo Strozzi 2011), Freiburg (Your North Is My South, Museum für Neue Kunst, 2018), and Seoul (Garden of Error and Decay, Art Center Nabi, 2013). An overview of her joint work with Michael Bielický was presented in their 2017 exhibition at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam in Havana. Their joint works also featured in Bielický’s 2020 retrospective at the ZKM Karlsruhe. In Czechia, Richter’s work has been shown at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague (Welcome to Capitalism!, 2008; Cartographies of Hope: Change Narratives, 2012); her work with Michael Bielický also featured in the 2022 exhibition Kinetismus: 100 Years of Electricity in Art at Kunsthalle Praha.
This aluminium print is part of the series Zuck-Err-DNA-A (Project #13021, 2022), which comprises portraits of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. Richter created this series of portraits in reaction to Zuckerberg’s announcement about the transition of the original Facebook website into the Metaverse. These works represent her critical stance toward Zuckerberg’s idea of the Metaverse as the future of the internet, virtualizing our lives by transferring interpersonal communication into a collective, three-dimensional cyberspace. Richter printed his portrait onto Kodak’s high-end Endura photographic paper, which is suitable for high-quality artistic prints. Subsequently, she used the patented Diasec technique to cover these grainy digital portraits in a four-millimetre-thick layer of acrylic, making them resistant to mechanical damage and ultraviolet light. The inspiration for these oversized portraits were digital artifacts and what she calls “Err videos” from her old, worn-out Sony Ericsson K800i mobile phone. As she photographed Zuckerberg, the phone produced a new visual malfunction resulting in a pronounced vertical structure. The technologically distorted portrait intersected with her theoretical insight into the contemporary medialized world, thus imbuing the work with a powerful cultural-critical dimension as Richter views Zuckerberg as the face of voluntary social exploitation, where the user becomes a product used for increasing profits while national laws and ethical norms are disregarded. She thus uses these deformed portraits to spotlight the negative aspects of Facebook, which also functions as a space for disseminating stereotypes and fake news and provides a platform for non-ethical groups threatening to destabilize democracy. These works therefore draw attention to the unwillingness of Facebook to filter out untruthful information. Richter sees the incipient transition to the Metasystem, which will integrate various different functions, as a grave danger with unpredictable consequences.
Apart from making these physical prints, Richter also collaborated with Alex Wagner and Michael Bielický to create 150 differently modified NFT portraits which continuously deconstruct and regenerate themselves. Each portrait is unique and, similarly to the logic of Facebook’s algorithms, the digital DNA of each individual artwork unpredictably changes. These NFT files digitally replicate the gene expression of chromosome 1, as documented by the Human Genome Project.
Kamila B. Richter (born 1976, Olomouc) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in 2001, and later, in 2010, completed her doctorate at the same institution. Between 2000 and 2002, she lived in South Africa and studied at the Technikon Natal in Durban. She currently lives and works between Düsseldorf and Karlsruhe. Richter has exhibited her work in Havana (11th Havana Biennial, 2012), Moscow (2011), Sevilla (Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla, 2008), Bad Rothenfelde (LichtSicht 4, Gradierwerk-Projektion, Projektionsbiennale, 2013; LichtSicht 6, Gradierwerk-Projektion, Projektionsbiennale, 2017), Düsseldorf (Über das Morgen hinaus, Museum Kunstpalast, 2014), Karlsruhe (YOU-ser, ZKM, 2007, YOU-ser 2, ZKM, 2009; Notation, ZKM, 2009; Global Contemporary, ZKM, 2011; GLOBALE, ZKM, 2015; Global Control and Censorship, ZKM, 2015; Open Codes, ZKM, 2017), Florence (Declining Democracy, Palazzo Strozzi 2011), Freiburg (Your North Is My South, Museum für Neue Kunst, 2018), and Seoul (Garden of Error and Decay, Art Center Nabi, 2013). An overview of her joint work with Michael Bielický was presented in their 2017 exhibition at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam in Havana. Their joint works also featured in Bielický’s 2020 retrospective at the ZKM Karlsruhe. In Czechia, Richter’s work has been shown at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague (Welcome to Capitalism!, 2008; Cartographies of Hope: Change Narratives, 2012); her work with Michael Bielický also featured in the 2022 exhibition Kinetismus: 100 Years of Electricity in Art at Kunsthalle Praha.
