Anyone who wants to understand the present in the 2020s while simultaneously becoming an internet personality has to be fast. Present. Hyperreactive. And even that will no longer be enough to avoid being overtaken by the next update.
For the time being, we will be in Munich. With Joachim Bosse and Rulton Fyder.
One of them, Joachim Bosse, is a former advertiser, founder and creative director of one of Germany's best-known advertising agencies. For several years now, he has been working as a conceptual artist.
The other, Rulton Fyder, is an anonymous artist known for recontextualizing the works of other artists. For several years, he has also existed as a faceless internet persona.
Both have understood that today it is no longer enough to simply be an artist; one must also become a brand. One provokes speculation about who might be hiding behind the name Rulton Fyder. The other is relentlessly occupied with understanding the present.
And for the time being, Bosse and Fyder will be exhibiting together in Munich. For the time being, that is unlikely to change. Or perhaps only as quickly as the art caravan moves on to the next major event in the next city.
Anyone who wants to understand the present in the 2020s while simultaneously becoming an internet personality has to be fast. Present. Hyperreactive. And even that will no longer be enough to avoid being overtaken by the next update.
Bosse has therefore made it his task to capture the present with its iconic slogans, brands, and media. Brand names like Nike or Rolex have long since lost their shine in his work. Rendered in black and white, they resemble cave paintings of late capitalism. Clearance sales are commented on by a friendly smiling emoji on a glowing billboard. Thumbs up! In his performance series DIKTAT, he has the contents of our feeds transcribed by others-or writes them down himself. In short: the present becomes material for an exercise in penmanship.
Fyder, meanwhile, is drawn from one trend to the next. From post-NFT to post-AI. First NFTs were everywhere until-as they say-the bubble burst. Now AI is everywhere, to the point where we barely even notice anymore how deeply technology shapes everyday life. Fyder does not despair over this condition, but he reminds us that perhaps now would be an appropriate time to begin. Because who is still able to keep up? One AI model chases the next. Anyone producing images as an artist now finds themselves competing with AI slop. It is perhaps fortunate, then, that Fyder turns to the artistic production of the past in order to comment on the present. "You want what it gives you" reads one of his new works, in lettering whose blunt immediacy recalls Barbara Kruger.
We no longer even know what it is we want. Do we want to prompt? Is this the sellout of ideas? For the time being, we will be in Munich, trying together with Fyder and Bosse to figure out which of these thoughts are still truly our own.
Text by Anika Meier
