[The original version of the story below from STIR (“See. Think. Inspire. Reflect.”) includes seven more images and two videos of the intriguing presence-evoking art of Dennis Rudolph. Find out and see more at the Upstream Gallery website, the artist’s dennisrudolph.art website and his Instagram. –Matthew]

[Image: Installation view of Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft at Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam, 2023. Detailed view of Orpheus (1. Gesang), 2020, Oil on canvas and AR app. Credit: Courtesy of Dennis Rudolph]

Dennis Rudolph redefines art’s boundaries through the virtual and the tangible

The new media artist from Berlin invites viewers to traverse the ever-blurring frontier between the real and the virtual.

By Daria Kravchuk
October 17, 2023

Dennis Rudolph, a new media artist based in Berlin, converges augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and traditional oil brushwork. His artistic practice focuses on a vibrant metamorphosis of centuries of Western culture, as classical historical genres find new resonance via the new media tools such as the VR software Google TiltBrush and the GPS based AR app. One can behold his creations through the lens of a smartphone and VR headsets, and witness an almost theatrical spectacle submerging the viewer into the very fabric of the artwork.

Rudolph tells STIR that one of his main visual inspirations is “the Baroque fresco by Cortona in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. The illusionistic space of the ceiling painting fits very well the illusion of VR and AR. Similar to the spatial illusion of baroque ceiling frescoes, a new reality opens up in front of the visitor’s eyes in AR. Of course, only for those who own a smartphone. Which applies to pretty much everyone. We are already all cyborgs.”

Back in 2017, Rudolph embraced the VR conduit offered by Google TiltBrush and was captivated by the intangible essence of this artistic process. Results of his digital experiments materialised as artworks that straddle the enigmatic boundary between presence and absence, creating an evanescent yet palpable aura. Virtual space empowered Rudolph to transmute his visions into a 3D plane. He creates painted canvases where motion and ethereal spectacles are in harmony and sculptures that instigate an intricate interplay between actuality and the digital realm.

Replying to a question about his background, Rudolph says, “In an artistic crisis in 2012 I went to California to update Rodin’s famous sculptural work The Gates of Hell [modelled 1880-1917, cast 1926-28]. My work Das Portal was to be open and had to stand on the threshold between two realities—heaven and hell. Thus I had to find a medium which is present and absent at the same time. With the appearance of consumer friendly VR headsets in 2017 I was able to finish the project: I painted Das Portal in a 3D VR painting program and placed it with a GPS based AR app in California City, a failed urban development project in the Mojave Desert. VR became the other side. With your phone and the app you could see it and at the same time it wasn’t there when you lifted your eyes from your screen. This confrontation with the new mediums of VR and AR unleashed new inspiration for my art and completely changed the way I paint.”

Commenting on how the artist arrived at the idea of merging oil paintings and augmented and virtual reality, Rudolph explains, “I need physical things in my studio otherwise I would go crazy. In order to materialise the digital brush strokes I started using very thick paint, so as to give them back their body. Since my paintings are only a detail of the monumental digital 3D paintings, they seem to be abstract. When you use my AR app it recognises the painting and loads the full digital figure appearing at the same place where the detail was painted from. You then realise that the painting is not abstract but part of something bigger. When you look at old paintings they are often a window into a utopian other world. With my paintings it is the other way round: now this other side is coming out of my painting into our world”.

Rudolph adds, “Painting in VR has since become an indispensable part of my work and has led to a complete reorientation of my oil painting and sculpture. In the search for ways to give the digital brushstrokes back their materiality and bring them over to ‘our side’ of reality, I have begun painting details of the virtual works in a thick impasto technique with oil paint on canvas. This has created a very unique abstract painting position, which would not exist without the technological developments. With an AR app I developed, which visitors download onto their smartphones, the digitally painted figures emerge in mixed reality (MR) exactly at the sections I painted in oil. At that moment, the painting loses its abstraction and we realise that the physical painting is part of a larger digital whole. Together with music composed for the works, the pieces engage all of our senses, creating an immersive, multi-sensory experience in which oil paintings, digital paintings and music combine to create a Wagner-meets-Hollywood Gesamtkunstwerk.”

Human ingenuity has created technological conditions that are changing the existence and experience of art. In these circumstances the VR canvas becomes Rudolph’s platform for narration, a place where the delicate tension between presence and absence takes a central stage, inviting us to traverse the ever-blurring frontier between the real and the virtual.