Press : Tim Berresheim: Neue alte Welt

Tim Berresheim
Neue alte Welt

17. February - 25. May 2024

In the beginning was the word, fire and art. Tim Berresheim explores our present as the threshold of a new digital age and portrays the evolution of humankind and art with archaic power. The artist’s spectacular visual worlds and extraordinary augmented reality installations are on display at the NRW-Forum. This comprehensive retrospective brings together his early oeuvre and current works conceived exclusively for the exhibition – uniting analogue and digital art.

Tim Berresheim (b. 1975) is considered a pioneer of computer-aided art. His works are an interplay of art history, technology and nature. He refers to his approach as the “artistic archaeology of the present”.

“I work like a Stone Age man using the first crude tools in my digital cave,” says Berresheim. Like a hunter-gatherer, he wanders through archives, drawing inspiration from art history, speculating on the future and revealing new, hybrid visual worlds and aesthetics with his artistic research.

His oeuvre includes monumental wall works, complemented by paintings, drawings and sculptures. Everyday items and replicas of historical artefacts such as early musical instruments, miniature sculptures and ritual objects also accompany his artistic work and form part of the exhibition. In front of the NRW-Forum and inside its walls, an augmented reality avatar of Berresheim and his famous art figures known as Aspettatori invite visitors to play a game in which they themselves become hunter-gatherers.

Berresheim works with the latest technologies, from computer-generated imagery (CGI), high-performance photography, laser and 3D scanning to 3D printing and mixed reality in order to create something radically new. He recently visited caves such as Hohle Fels and Vogelherd, which are also UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and collaborated with the prehistoric archaeologist and professor Nicholas John Conard, who became famous for discovering the world’s oldest cultural artefacts in the caves of the Swabian Jura.

Berresheim calls his new cycle Fundleere Schicht (Sterile Layer) – an archaeological term used to describe the point where two time periods meet without leaving any artefacts behind. Berresheim’s works are intended to bridge this void. By bringing analogue and digital art into contact with each other, this layer – which is still empty from today’s perspective – is filled with the beginnings of a new digital age.

The exhibition will be accompanied by guest lectures by archaeologists and palaeontologists, which will continue this dialogue between the past, present and future.

Tim Berresheim studied under Albert Oehlen at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and under Johannes Brus at the HBK Braunschweig. His works can be found in the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Bonn) and the Kunstpalast (Düsseldorf).

The exhibition is curated by Alain Bieber, artistic director of the NRW-Forum.

Tim Berresheim. Neue alte Welt

Duration: 17. February bis 26. May 2024
Opening: 16. February 2024
Press-Preview: 15. February 2024, 11 am

Curator: Alain Bieber, artistic director of the NRW-Forum.

Press images

The image material listed may be used freely for thematic reporting (in print and online media as well as on social media channels) and provided that the photo credits given are cited. Six weeks after the end of the exhibition, the free right of use expires.