HERBERT W. FRANKE: ILLUMINATING THE INVISIBLE
KÖNIG GALERIE is pleased to announce ILLUMINATING THE INVISIBLE by the artist Herbert W. Franke. Born and educated in Vienna as a theoretical physicist, Franke was involved in an incredible range of endeavors, as an accomplished and accoladed writer, as well as a scientist.
July 5 - September 1, 2024
ILLUMINATING THE INVISIBLE pays tribute to Franke’s unique combination of creative and scientific pursuits, each informing the other. Indeed, the impulse toward aesthetic innovation guided Franke much more than any consideration of traditional notions of artistic beauty. As early as 1953, Franke put the photographic camera to groundbreaking ends, using the device to record forms and structures that exist in the world as such, but are “invisible” to the human eye – they can be detected solely with the aid of technology.
Working with the latest inventions in the Siemens laboratories, Franke made use of code as a method for quantifying information, later developing his own ideas on a new information-aesthetic model, which integrated artist and recipient into an overall system with the help of perception.
Artists like Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee had worked with analytic algorithms decades prior, and pioneering computer artists like Herbert W. Franke, Frieder Nake, Georg Nees, and Vera Molnár were able to transform those earlier ideas of concrete art into abstract digital code. ZENTRUM by Franke, coded in 1982, was translated for the blockchain in 2023 so that it can also be viewed and collected on the web today.
In the course of the work, not only was the aesthetic dimension of formulas and functions explored (e.g. Fourier transformations, algebra, stochastics, complex numbers, fields), but a whole series of new graphical programs were also developed and integrated into the DIBIAS software (for Digital Image Analysis System).
Additionally, Franke began organizing and curating exhibitions of generative art beginning in the 1960s, for example in 1968 at a joint event between MIT and the Technical University of Berlin on the subject of "The Computer in the University.” Together with the Goethe Institute, Franke presented the first worldwide overview of digital art in more than 200 countries starting in 1971, the same year that also saw the publication of "Computer Graphics – Computer Art”, widely regarded as the first comprehensive compendium of digital art.
ILLUMINATING THE INVISIBLE marks a powerful moment in the genealogy of art forms that Franke himself detected and presents select works for the first time for a public audience in Germany.