Regression to the Real Object

In his multi-part install­a­tion in the Kunst-Sta­tion Sankt Peter Köln, Joshua Gutowski engages with medi­eval and early mod­ern exhib­its from the col­lec­tion of Museum Schnütgen, loc­ated in the neigh­bour­ing church of St. Cäci­lien. Together with Sankt Peter it forms the last sur­viv­ing double-church com­plex in Cologne.

The artist devel­ops his works not from the his­tor­ical objects them­selves, but from their archival data, such as pho­to­graphs, 3D scans, and related doc­u­ment­a­tion. The res­ults are AI-gen­er­ated sculp­tures and digital prints that may appear famil­iar within a Chris­tian con­text, yet Joshua Gutowski’s work is ulti­mately con­cerned with the rela­tions between image, body, and real­ity, and with an embod­i­ment of the digital.

What func­tion does, or did, an arm reliquary ful­fil? What of that can an archival pho­to­graph con­vey, and what can an AI model? In which con­text does embod­i­ment or vital­isa­tion suc­ceed? What role do AI-gen­er­ated images play in today’s visual land­scape, what inform­a­tion do they draw on, and what can this lead to?

Joshua Gutowski’s works are artistic and at the same time philo­soph­ical enquir­ies at the inter­sec­tion of phe­nomen­o­logy, mater­ial cul­ture and the philo­sophy of rep­res­ent­a­tion.