About the Work
A familiar, dull sight of the kind encountered in cities all over the world: a grey high-rise building, a green tree and a blue sky. Havekost – it would seem – is showing us a wasteland of civilisation that could really exist. The point of departure for his paintings, however, are actually digital photographs, which the artist then reworks on the computer screen. Like the user interface that gives the work its name, they accordingly lack nuance and depth. What the artist reproduces is not reality, but what we perceive of reality in a digital medium. His artistic approach is an example of the fact that the dichotomy between abstraction and representation, a recurring concern of modern painting, has meanwhile been dissolved.
About the Acquisition
The lawyer and entrepreneur Peter Smeets of Frankfurt supports interesting cultural initiatives such as the small but exceptional Blumenbar publishing house. In the city on the Main he is active in the society of friends of the Museum für Moderne Kunst, among other organisations. He supported the Städel Museum’s contemporary art collection in 2007 by purchasing this painting for the Museums-Verein.
