The Desktop – En soloudstilling af Spøgelsesmaskinen aka Rune Brink Hansen

3 nov 202325 nov 2023

Betalt indhold

Pressemeddelelse:

Bricks Gallery is proud to present The Desktop, a solo exhibition by Spøgelsesmaskinen aka Rune Brink Hansen.

Curated by Majken Overgaard, The Desktop marks the artist’s first gallery solo show on Danish soil. Born in Denmark in 1979, Rune started working with digital interfaces during the early internet days. He’s since crafted digital visuals for festivals, designed spaces for museums, and exhibited his large scale light installations at various institutions and galleries. In 2021, he adopted the Spøgelsesmaskinen name for his 3D and NFT artwork. Fans and friends in the global, decentralised internet art community simply refer to him as “Spogels.”

Do you remember the first time you logged on to a computer – a desktop computer? How it felt like the world expanded and you gained access to a different place and a new state of mind? The Desktop takes its starting point in the feelings the computer interface can provide you with. The feeling of transcending the physical and losing oneself in a digital realm. In this exhibition artist Spøgelsesmaskinen aka Rune Brink Hansen explores the desktop as a portal between our digital and physical lives.

The computer desktop is a metaphor – when the first computer interfaces were designed they mimicked the physical desktop. We were given the objects that we were familiar with in our physical life – making the digital a continuation of the life we already know. The desktop metaphor is situating the screen as if it were the surface of a physical desk. We have visual representations of folders and trash cans that resemble physical objects, objects that we’re starting to forget.

Even though the linkage to physical objects and realities is strong when it comes to the desktop, the computer has always been a place for future visions. Sometimes so much so that we no longer seem to be able to separate our futures from technological development. We have always had dreams of how the computer would make everything easier for us and solve problems our human minds weren’t capable of. Spøgelsesmaskinen traces the idea of the graphical user interface to where it all began, the physical desk, and connects it with visions of past and future computers.

Historically, the desktop was a physical manifestation of power, whoever was in control was situated behind the mahogany desktop. Today, the desktop computer equals work. Offices, cubicles and never-ending days behind the screen. Spøgelsesmaskinen is a digital artist, who has a longstanding practice operating in the space between the digital and physical realm and in this exhibition he creates a state of being where we are constantly oscillating between the digital into a physical space and dives deep into the possibilities within the monitor. In this exhibition these practices come together. The distinction of being online or offline is non-existing. Rather it is a continuum.

The pixel is the basic structure in the works and pays homage to this unique digital material and provides each individual work with an air of nostalgia. We have had the personal computer for a long time now, more than a generation. We can now look back at our history with our computers and the various generations of desktops and reminiscence.

The exhibition exists in Bricks Gallery and online. Both in a digital 3D online exhibition space and on the blockchain. The blockchain is a shared data structure and for Spøgelsesmaskinen the blockchain equals the coming of a decentralized web and most importantly a space for community and friendship. He has been active on various blockchains for the past years and as the desktop allowed us to work with others across time and space and became a portal to new worlds, new ways of being together in a digital realm, so did the blockchain and the worldwide community surrounding the technology.

– Majken Overgaard, Curator, Copenhagen, 2023

Dette indhold er produceret i samarbejde med et udstillingssted som en del af udstillingstedets Artguide-abonnement hos kunsten.nu.
Kunsten.nus uafhængige redaktion har intet at gøre med indholdet.