Projects — Carl-Robert Kagge

Four-Grain Image
2020

Acrylic on PET-G plastic
60 × 77 cm

Carl-Robert Kagge's solo exhibition "Four-Grain Image" is a site-specific work inspired by the location of Vitriingalerii, displaying a hauntological image of Instagram's infinite database. Replacing the glass walls of the gallery with a canvas of bent plastic, Kagge continues developing his original artistic technique.

The title of the show refers to the manual technique the artist uses to apply the motifs onto plastic, silkscreen printing. On the other hand, this marks the process an image uploaded to the internet goes through before reaching the viewer: mutations on the screen used to view the image.

Carl-Robert Kagge is a painter, focusing on images found on social media and their materialisations in physical space. The artist's original technique consists of silkscreen printing and applying the images on heat-shaped plastic. Gathering his visual material on various online platforms, Kagge creates a subjective archive of past and present that has not much to do with collectively perceived space of reality. Using already existing visual material, the artist composes a unique field of images that does not always comply with straightforward categorisation. Kagge skilfully navigates multiple fields: painting, printing, design, internet culture, technology, and graffiti. Looking at Kagge's work on computer screen, it may resemble Photoshop comps, however, exhibited in physical space we see painting-hybrids, blurred photos abstracted until they become unrecognisable. A similar effect occurs when phones fail to load Instagram photos in full resolution due to slow internet connection. All of this leads the viewer to be confronted with hyper-physicality: a mix of virtual and material shaped into something almost haunting. Kagge's work skilfully reflects a state increasingly taking hold of people – a time and space, where technology has become a permanent artificial limb and where it has become almost impossible to distinguish between the real and the simulated.

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Exhibited at Vitriingalerii, Tallinn, Põhja pst 35
Curator: Lilian Hiob
14 August 2020 – 7 September 2020

Text: Lilian Hiob
Photos: Kristina Õllek
Techinal assistance: Oliver Kadakas