Hasta La Ideas

Quayola has created at new multi-screen video installation based on a series of paintings at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Lille, titled Strata #4. The work will be on show at the museum this weekend: two teaser clips from it are shown here.

Using a series of paintings from the museum’s Flemish collection, and specifically focusing on the grand altarpieces by Rubens, Quayola has stripped away the surface skin of the paintings and then used custom software to decode the rules present in the proportion, composition and colour of each painting, defining colour palettes, patterns and structures, and generating new abstract geometries following those very same rules. The resulting installation illustrates Quayola’s journey from the original painting to its new form as a digital abstraction.

Strata #4 is part of an ongoing series of works by Quayola that aim to challenge the accepted perceptions of classical art, architecture and iconography. The installation will be on show as a large-scale diptych in the atrium at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Lille (where it will appear alongside the paintings used in the film) until Sunday.

The piece was produced by Nexus Interactive Arts. More of Quayola’s work can be seen at quayola.com.