Christoph Keller Data Error – Roma Antichità at 2018-02-05 at 21:03.11, 2021

Christoph Keller's new suite of prints draws on the artist's time spent in Rome, at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, an eminent German art historical research institute.

Summarily entitled Data Error – Roma Antichità, the works combine images of a site in Rome, generally a vintage photograph depicting a structure from the city's ancient past, with a pattern resulting from a glitch of the artist's computer.

The pattern superimposed on the found photograph—each bears the stamp from the archive at the Bibliotheca Hertziana that gives the series its title—is the result of a technological failure: Christoph Keller recorded his computer crashes and kept the image of the frozen screen as visible trace of the system failure. In some cases, fragments of images are recognizable, others include vertical or horizontal bands of color, or lines caught in cascading distortions. The title of each work gives date and time of these moments.

Visually compelling, mysterious yet eloquent, each work from the series represents a momentary collapse of three technological eras: One is represented by the vintage photograph, understood as photographic print of an analog image. Another of the photo as part of an archive, a record at Bibliotheca Hertziana of the art historical construction of classical antiquity. Finally, the pattern created by the system failure of Christoph Keller's computer gives form to the transformation of images into data, as an analog representation of a digital overload.

With Data Error – Roma Antichità, Keller continues his investigation into the conception of an idealized classical antiquity in Western European civilization.

The vintage photograph depicts the following site: Roman Forum - view from the Capitol to the Temple of Saturn and the Arch of Severus, Santi Luca e Martina in the background.