CHRIS KONDEK: PIXEL DESIRES

BBA Gallery presents ‘Pixel Desires’, the first solo exhibition by Berlin-based artist and director Chris Kondek. The exhibition introduces a new body of work where Kondek translates his long-standing engagement with digital systems, code, and control from the stage into generative, algorithmic images.

Kondek's artworks begin with a simple photograph—an index of reality—which is then transformed by a custom-designed algorithm. Over the course of 2,000 iterative steps, every pixel is slowly and systematically displaced. This movement isn't random; it is guided by a simulated logic of flows and a turbulence that dictates each pixel's path, creating an invisible choreography within the digital space. The resulting images occupy an evocative middle ground: a landscape that feels simultaneously organic and procedural, suggesting memory, geological erosion, or an echo of shifting data and code.

At the core of Pixel Desires is a meditation on control and perception in an algorithmic world. The exhibition reveals how what we see is fundamentally shaped by rules we cannot see. The algorithm in Kondek's work becomes a powerful metaphor for the invisible forces that govern how information, images, and identities circulate and transform in the digital sphere. Each pixel achieves a kind of autonomy, freed from its original fixed position, allowed to follow its own "desire," yet remains strictly constrained by the larger, unseen logic of the system.

This dynamic mirrors our contemporary condition: the image, quietly shaped by unseen code and flowing along paths not of our choosing, serves as a powerful metaphor. The visual effect—which may look like organic emergence or digital erosion—is, in fact, the calculated trace of a system exerting quiet control. These are not merely abstract compositions, but pointed reflections on how the invisible hand of computation is fundamentally reshaping perception, pixel by pixel.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Chris Kondek's artistic practice is deeply rooted in media, performance, and the interrogation of digital infrastructure. Born in Boston, he began his career with the pioneering Wooster Group in New York and collaborated with Laurie Anderson before moving to Berlin in 1999. His signature visual language has since been central to major theater, dance, and opera productions across Europe, leading to celebrated collaborations with figures like Meg Stuart, Pierre Audi, Sebastian Baumgarten, and Lydia Steier—including the "Opera of the Year" award in 2016 for his work on Stockhausen's Donnerstag aus Licht.

Alongside his design work, Kondek is a co-founder and director of doublelucky productions, a media performance group dedicated to exploring the unseen digital architectures that shape modern life. His recent turn to generative, algorithmic image-making is a natural extension of this career-long inquiry. The same systems, architectures, and patterns that drive his acclaimed stage work now find expression in the quiet, composed drama of the still image. Chris Kondek is currently a Professor for Interdisciplinary Artistic Practice and Theory at the Universität der Künste Berlin.