Thomas Bayrle's Pixelated Caravaggio at Gavin Brown's Enterprise in Rome

Thomas Bayrle (Berlin, 1937) presents a series of works at Sant'Andrea de Scaphis, the Roman space of Gavin Brown's Enterprise. The deconsecrated church, bearing traces of its past uses, hosts reproductions based on Caravaggio's 1602 'Saint Matthew and the Angel' from the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi. Bayrle's images of the saint appear pixelated and fragmented, evoking Thomas Ruff's JPEGs. The generative module is the iPhone silhouette, employed in a process of constant construction and deconstruction rooted in late modernist seriality. This creates a tension between original and copies, producing what Bayrle calls 'superforms'—conglomerates of microscopic images. Through this compositional strategy, the artist amplifies the iconic obsession of today's media landscape, exposing its powerful alienating effect.