BEEPLE: TALES FROM A SYNTHETIC FUTURE

Deji Art Museum is thrilled to announce the opening of the first-ever solo museum exhibition of internationally renowned contemporary digital artist Beeple (Mike Winkelmann), titled Beeple: Tales from a Synthetic Future. The exhibition will debut on Thursday, 14 November 2024. In collaboration with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Senior Artistic Advisor, Deji Art Museum presents a comprehensive and systematic retrospective of Beeple’s creative career. Audiences are invited to immerse themselves in exploring multiple dimensions of Beeple’s artistic practice, gaining insight into his critical inquiries and profound impact on the development of digital art and contemporary art history.

This will be Beeple’s largest solo exhibition to date, featuring some of his most iconic works, including Everydays, Human One, S.2122, as well as new pieces created specifically for the exhibition. In addition, the Museum will showcase a special section and display project dedicated to discovering and nurturing emerging digital artists, alongside a series of panel discussions and public programs.

Hans Ulrich Obrist says, “Globally recognised with the worlds of art, music and technology through his experimentations with new media and NFTs, Beeple synthesises these different fields. Tales from a Synthetic Future will reveal the different dimension of his practice.

Conceived as a collision between the past, present and future frames of reality, the immersive exhibition will demonstrate Beeple’s cross-disciplinary approach by telling the story of how his practice developed in the early 2000s with the inception of his Everydays series – from hand-drawn images to digitally rendered paintings – through to his recent kinetic artworks: living organisms comprising digital video and three-dimensional sculpture. The exhibition will also provide a unique insight into the artist’s processes over the years by recreating elements from his studio in Charleston, North Carolina, together with several early projects encountered via the computer technologies, or ‘digital archaeologies’ with which the artist began his practice.

Presented as a linear chronology, this survey exhibition will demonstrate the different temporalities that coexist within Beeple’s expansive output, and how low-tech or analogue modes of creation, such as drawing and doodling, continue to serve as important foundations within his visionary digital practice.