VOID SEASON
Solo Show // Zeitguised
Curated by Niio Curatorial
Zeitguised is a contemporary art studio exploring the frontier zone between digital abstraction and realism. Their ambiguously poetic work draws from the infinite recombination capacity of the internet’s crazed mash-up culture, paired with the manipulation potential of digital imaging tools. Using seductive 3D animation, Zeitguised creates post-narrative modes of structural transformations, evoking mental states of manic order and complex instability. The studio’s unique vocabulary of abstract geometric forms defies laws of physics and redefines the aesthetic language of both fine art and commercial industry in a digital world. Objects rather than characters become the focal point of the unfolding narrative; surface phenomena is content and unstable structures of colour, shape and spatial motion become storyline and protagonist simultaneously: the dichotomy between cognitive imagination and rational observation is exposed as one and the same mental figment.
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ZEITGUISED
Art Studio
ZEITGUISED is an art and design studio conjuring exquisite realities, at the intersection where digital and physical space meet.
ZEITGUISED have been influencing synthetic image making since 2001, with an approach connecting formal and conceptual design, oscillating between cerebral tickle and poetic flavours. The work of the collective often bears character like abstractions, brandishing a unique blend of digital animism carried by hallucinative narratives of shape, color and behaviour relations.
ZEITGUISED
Void Season
Part dreamlike theatre, part lateral cargo cult hustle, a quick succession of bold garment designs acts as an ersatz runway show. In a minimal set of solid backdrops, radiant colors and oblique choreography second the exquisite design of costumes that have been entirely artificially generated.
A wealth of custom procedural surface detail emphasizes the uncanny rift between the realistic presence of the guises and the abstract vacancy of the digitized human movements.
ZEITGUISED
ZEITGUISED x KVADRAT: emancipath
Physical and digital space poetically intersect in the latest work by ZEITGUISED, commissioned by sublime textile design house Kvadrat.
The film, or rather set of moving sculptures, plays with the possibility of metamorphous shapes as a physical reality. Commonly passive textiles and upholstery are shown here with life-like behaviour as if they possessed a sovereign spirit.
Seamlessly smooth transformations of organic and geometric forms are constantly working towards striking abstract compositions, and each fabric has its own character.
At the beginning of the looping sequence of shots, the current edition of Kvadrat fabric see- mingly oozes independently across solid flat geometries as if it were growing endlessly from within itself. Over the course of the following shots the forms start to bulge and become auto- nomous expanding volumes, first in their formal language and later literally as floating shapes themselves.
ZEITGUISED
Flotsam & Jetsam: Monobloc
“Flotsam & Jetsam: Monobloc” treats the ubiquitous plastic chair as a contemporary design classic. In this film we show an enormous hovering cloud of iconic chairs that behave like flotsam and jetsam in breaking waves/ the surf. Poetry as a kind of algorithmic perpetuum mobile. The everyday, casual form of the Monobloc is pitted as a stark contrast in this film against those of the designer und architects’ chairs. Present in larger numbers in the frame, it shows the audacity to have gained a place in the world of exceptional design by mere universal distribution.
ZEITGUISED
Transpire
Peaceful and patient in pace and behaviour, the arresting physical impossibility of this process is softly tickled by the realism and detail of fabric texture in the vivid lighting. To glance at these volutes is to touch them, to feel their tactility with your eyes.
ZEITGUISED
geist.xyz
geist.xyz is a different kind of fashion project: what looks at first glance as an eccentric tangle of simulated dance and a color coordinated tumblr exploration turns out to be a study of handcrafted algorithmic textiles and procedural surfaces. A synthetic ghost shifts simulated textiles from passive matter to live organisms. They behave like apparitions in an artificial choreography, with movements that are imaginary yet familiar. Like a constant metamorphosis, the same sequence gets transformed over and over again. At each step, all aspects of the designs are modified, from algorithmic pattern to color scheme to fabric behaviour. The results are meandering layers of style changes. A linear montage shows the intricate details. Shuffled layers of metronomic sounds emphasize the transformation fluctuating in and out of sync. The grid of moving images on geist.xyz visualizes our conceptual approach and color scheme.
ZEITGUISED
Unstill Life
Unstill Life is a deconstruction of high definition photo realism. By utilizing the means of simulated photography it constructs an entirely artificial slice-of-life world from geometries, textures and digitally modeled lighting algorithms. Instead of focussing on artificial looks of computer generated imagery, the deconstruction creeps into the experience of the image by way of abstract camera moves similar to those of 3D editing motions. The notion of an omnipotent human editor to the landscape culminates in shifts in the seemingly solid built structures and apparent natural environment.
ZEITGUISED
Ectopic
Ectopic is proposing to blur the lines between organic matter, live organism and wearable artifact: Clothes become colonies of engineered bacteria to populate the naked skin of humans.