“To me, family means two things: the biological family and the family you choose, my family in France, and my family in Berlin. The two are fundamentally different, the Berlin family is queer and kinky, it's the family you can fuck with. Then there is the family that witnessed your birth, the family you grew up with, where you came from. Both are inescapably intertwined and for a brief moment, a minute or a month, I would like to put these two opposing ideas of what constitutes a family into one single space.”

Emerging from his background as a mechanical engineer, the artistic work by Jonathan Apelbaum aims for creation through collaboration. Those bearing witness to his large-scale oil portraiture in framework of the exhibition „Family“ are invited to engage with a synergy of diverse elements embedded within their production.

Alongside a team of engineers, the French-Algerian artist has developed Al sensory hardware that, when paired with the paintings, change their composition in response to certain external stimuli, such as motion or the pulse of a nearby body. With nearly 2000 LED lights behind each cognitive painting, stories unfold that are constantly evolving, influencing and being influenced by their peripheral environments. As meditations on gender, intimacy, family, religion and technology, they are in constant conversation with themselves and their audiences.