<Mixed media, CG Animation, 2026 >

The new series “Latent State – Tondo” by Banz & Bowinkel continues the earlier bodies of work Primitives and Compositions— CGI-based series in which the relationships between material, color, and form were explored as compositions within digital simulation environments. In these works, Banz & Bowinkel reflected on the conditions of images in the age of digital image generation: the virtual appears in a pronounced realism that makes the simulated seem almost physical. At the same time, the images remain entirely within their own space of illusion. In this respect, the works stand in the tradition of the classical panel painting, which directs the gaze as if through a window into another reality.
With the series “Latent State – Tondo,” this practice expands into the physical space. The works detach themselves
from the purely screen-based surface and unfold as multilayered objects in space, in which digital and haptic worlds
are interwoven. Materials such as Plexiglas panels, mirrored aluminum surfaces, wood, and found materials modified by the artists are mounted onto an anodized profile frame. The elements are arranged on both the front and back of
the frame in multiple layers, creating overlapping spatial structures.
Open sections within the construction allow a view of the wall behind it, on which a mural is installed, thereby incorporating the surrounding environment into the work. Circular openings are milled into the mirrored aluminum plates, behind which monitors display computer-generated animations. These videos appear in the format of the tondo as an integral component of the material structure and correspond formally with the round elements of the other panels. The digital animations were developed as part of the overall composition: they relate formally and temporally to the spatial structure of the object. Physical materials, reflective surfaces, and moving images enter into a dialogue in which real and simulated spaces confront one another.
Central to the series is the idea of closing a loop: from physical space to its digital simulation and back again to the
reintroduction of the virtual into a material form within the original space. In “Latent State – Tondo,” the image thus becomes at once object, interface, and spatial situation—a hybrid site in which perception oscillates between material
presence and digital imagination.

Exhibition “Looped Futures” at Artemis Gallery Lisbon
Curated by Manuel Mendonca
Photos by Jorge Silva