Botticelli - Grey

The Berlin Gemäldegalerie invited American artist Michael Joaquin Grey to chooseone of the well-known Renaissance portraits in the museum‘s collection and producea contemporary artistic reaction to the work. Grey chose Sandro Botticelli‘s paintingSimonetta Vespucci (circa 1475). The portrait is the basis for the computer-generated work Between Simonetta, whichslowly but continuously alters the portrait by means of an algorithmic program, calculatingever-new combinations. Questions arising from this work – of likeness and ideal, of authenticity, temporality and the transformation of an image – lie at the centre ofthe catalogue. The artist at once thematizes the paradigms of human perception andexplores the genesis of the face as a constructive, self-reflexive process.