Artist:

Holze, Christian, German painter, sculptor, photographer and installation artist with curatorial practice, b. 1988 Naumburg/ST. Studies: Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig (HGB) (2011–2019), with C. Lahr and class of J. Blank; Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (AT) (2015–2016), class of J. Göthe and A. Speier; Hoch - schule für bildende Künste, Hamburg (2019), class of A. Reyle, master student degree from the HGB (2019). Various exhibitions, e.g. 2017 residency stipend Künstlerstadt Kalbe (Milde), 2022 Kaiserring stipend Verein zur Förderung Moderner Kunst e.V. Goslar—Holze’s interest lies in the interface of art, technology and economy. He com - bines various artistic categories into hybrid works (objects, 3D graphics, sculptures, paintings, installations) that negotiate authorship, commodification and copying in visual art. The explora - tion, elaboration and dissolution of media categories is just as essential to him as the fusion of analogue, traditional and digital working methods. The starting point for his works is usually pictorial material that is part of the canon of art his - tory and is digitally accessible. Since 2016, H. has taken the path to canvas products using →3D pro - grammes with great consistency. His practice, which had been primarily painting and sculpture, shifted to the digital space, which makes it possible to simulate working processes with great weight and dimension in a relatively short time and to let computer-generated random results flow into the artistic process. In the virtual studio, H. models like a sculptor: he designs materiality and folds and, in the course of →rendering, determines depth of field, perspective, image details and camera angles like a photographer. Colour gradients are also based on a digital template and satirise the artistic gesture. Structures generated by means of →fluid simulation also form the template for a final physical-real intervention. Starting from the question of the residual specificity of the medium of painting, H. devel - oped his own production practice. Inkjet prints, transferred to canvas, take on a handpainted character through multiple glazing and are often legitimised as originals through splashes of paint applied directly to the canvas with profane gestures. The format depends on the maximum possible printing width of 1.50 metres. In most cases, the date of completion is noted directly on the aluminium back panel. All parts of the canvas are made for viewing. All pictures are covered with the watermark CHH, which is borrowed from the practice of picture agencies or suppliers of stock photographs, and at the same time is reminiscent of wellknown brand abbreviations such as LV (Louis Vuitton) and represents the artist’s initials. Holze’s works are meta-products that in a material-iconographic manner and framed by Plexiglas, are reminiscent of the packaging of valuable electronic articles in the wholesale trade as well as Y. Klein’s practice. Holze’s works connect the art-historical memory of the viewer with the omnipresence of the world of commodity images in the digital age. A highlight was the series of works and eponymous exhibitions Nothing New (2020, Bjorn & Gundorph Gallery, Aarhus (DNK); REITER, Leipzig). The title of the installation, which refers to the late Hellenistic sculpture Borghesian Fencer, already posed the question of original and copy, which also shaped the pre-digital age: G. L. Bernini created his David sculpture in 1623 on the basis of the model. In virtual reality, both figures are sought-after avatars in view of their dynamic, lively all-round appearance and expressive facial expressions. The question of originality, authorship, copying, adaptation and transformation of images goes hand in hand with their capitalisation. In his works, H. thematises the relationship between art and commerciality and deals with motifs and questions around the marketing of copyrights, such as mutual fertilisation and the boundary between art and business, using the example of the co-operation between artists and companies that is attractive for both sides (e.g. E. Douglas/ French label Balenciaga). In the case of such art-company collaborations, the question arises as to whether the works depicted on garments and accessories represent an independent artistic work or merely a copy of a work. For Old Masters, New Clothes: Highsnobiety Drops Sotheby’s Streetwear Line (2020), the auction house Sotheby’s put together a limited collection of auction highlights printed on clothing to encourage a new clientele to buy art. Comparable to objects of every - day use that can be purchased in museum shops, which declare paintings to be everyday patterns without irony, the line expresses the demand and the desire of the end consumer for an affordable original. Holze’s works testify to his interest in such strategies of commercialising art. He reproduces established and esteemed tools in the fashion industry such as sam - pling and quotation as an artistic gesture and at the same time illustrates the valorisation of historical contexts for commercial purposes. The starting point for the work Cruise (2022; 81 x 63 cm) was a photograph of the fashion show of the Italian fashion company GUCCI, which had invited visitors, among other things, to The Cloisters (Westminster Abbey, London), the Palatina Gallery (in the Pitti Palace, Florence) and the Capitoline Muse - ums (Rome) for the presentation of its annual cruise collection 2020. The first modern museum in history, opened to the public in 1734, was an important inspiration for creative director A. Michele’s reference-rich designs. The aluminium reverse of the work Cruise (2022; 81 x 63 cm) shows Artemis (1909), the goddess of the hunt, by Sir W. Hamo Thornycroft RA, in 2021 on istockphoto. com among the most popular prints for the subject Artemis. According to A. Ziefer (2020), the idea of sam - pling and the free montage of set pieces from various sources, the interpenetration of popular and high culture, of street wear and haute couture in the fashion industry are in the tradition of a proven cultural technique. By appropriating all these contexts of meaning for his artistic practice, H. claims authorship, “but at the same time he also refers to the origin of his models from databases and the product character of the artworks he creates for a market in which the principle of price determination and value enhancement is tied exclusively to the name of the artist.” At first, each of Holze’s works seems to invite the viewer only to look at aesthetic, self-sufficient representationalism, but it quickly proves to be extremely ambiguous and supported by a high intellectual demand. Thus, he also uses →artificial intelligence (AI) as a starting point for his works in a way that, on the one hand, creates diverse contexts of meaning and, on the other hand, can also be used in the viewer’s imagination through this special form of visualisation. For some works in the exhibition Time Sleep in the Mönchehaus Museum in Goslar (2022), adaptations of existing images were created using AI: the programme generates a new image on a specific theme from images available on the web or adapts individual images in different variations (School of Athens (2022, 130 x 100 cm), Genius Teaching the Arts, (2022, 81 x 63 cm), Time Sleep (2022, 130 x 100 cm). Within the framework of the Kaiserring stipend, H. also realised the sculp - tures Laocoon Reverse (2022, 80 x 60 x 220 cm) and Bust of the Farnese Hercules (2022, 60 x 40 x 40 cm). In this case, too, questions of authorship, what is original and the origin of certain works flow into the aesthetic level of production as well as the aesthetic level of reception. Reality and fiction, the fleetingness of the moment, the transience of historical epochs and the exploration of space are further themes of Holze’s installations, which have a strong conceptual character. The focus of Holze’s work is less on individual pictures than on installations in space. It is not uncommon for him to use aluminium frames for the presentation, which are reminiscent of trade show stands and make it possible to view the back of the canvases as an equal part of the work. The work and form of presentation merge into a sculptural structure and reveal Holze’s training in media art and object sculpture. Since 2022, Holze’s concept of work has increasingly expanded to include curatorial questions such as the design of displays. For the exhibition Pwned (2021, X-Pinky, Berlin), for example, he used archive shelves for the presentation of his works, which as a display also addressed a materialisation of his basic theme of the appropriation of archives. →Raytracing enables him to reflect real spaces in the surfaces of the sculptures and simulations. In the Mönchehaus Museum Goslar, for example, the museum’s exhibition space, which H. digitally recreated in the course of preparing the exhibition, was reflected in the works; in addition, he created a post-digital trompe-l’œil with a steel grid wallpaper reminiscent of a display warehouse with material typical reflections in the metal. Text: Sarah Alberti