Refik Anadol,
Hannibal Books
To accompany the exhibition Refik Anadol — Latent City until November 8 at BRUSK, Bruges.
Bruges has no need of more tourists and its art hall BRUSK, which opened in May, does not share the ambition of Bilbao’s Guggenheim to put a city on the map.
While BRUSK surely will draw even more international visitors, its aim is also to serve the long-suffering local population. Its name combines BRU for Bruges and SK for Schone Kunsten, or fine arts in Dutch, and it seeks to fill a gap in the city for a permanent exhibition hall.
It also aspires to find “surprising, unexpected connections,” to quote one of the two books by publisher Hannibal Books that accompany the art hall’s opening. One celebrates the first artist to exhibit at BRUSK – Turkish-born, Los Angeles-based digital artist Refik Anadol. The other enhances a very different parallel exhibition – “Bigger Picture” that documents the story of Bruges, including its art, from 900 to 1550.
Connected Worlds of Bruges. Review by Barbara Lewis. – londongrip.co.uk
Anadol, like everyone else, relies on all that has gone before, but his greatest creative excitement is for the here and now.
“I was not present at the birth of painting or sculpture, but I have witnessed the birth of digital art,” he says.
We are told he is a post-digital artist, meaning: “The digital is not an auxiliary tool but the primary medium”. Anadol puts it slightly differently. He regards data as paint.
He realised his vocation at the age of eight when his mother brought home a Commodore computer. He says he instantly realised technology was something to embrace and he set to work modifying computer games.
“To me, it felt like a collaborator: an imaginative space,” he said.
He also empathises with Mark Rothko “who described his paintings as environments rather than images”. They allow their viewers to lose themselves in squares of colour.
Anadol’s data-driven brush allows for complex, multi-dimensional textures to pull the viewer in.
“My installations are also environments, perceptual spaces built from ethical data and sustainable computation,” he says.
They are created with a team that works with him in his Los Angeles studio.
For the “Latent City” of Bruges, they have converted thousands of museum images, archival photographs and live data into giant, hypnotic installations. They invoke the DNA, the rhythm, the poetry of a city, at once historic and evolving – unsettling and thrilling in equal measure.
Barbara Lewis © 2026.
Refik Anadol,
Hannibal Books
To accompany the exhibition Refik Anadol — Latent City until November 8 at BRUSK, Bruges.
Bruges has no need of more tourists and its art hall BRUSK, which opened in May, does not share the ambition of Bilbao’s Guggenheim to put a city on the map.
While BRUSK surely will draw even more international visitors, its aim is also to serve the long-suffering local population. Its name combines BRU for Bruges and SK for Schone Kunsten, or fine arts in Dutch, and it seeks to fill a gap in the city for a permanent exhibition hall.
It also aspires to find “surprising, unexpected connections,” to quote one of the two books by publisher Hannibal Books that accompany the art hall’s opening. One celebrates the first artist to exhibit at BRUSK – Turkish-born, Los Angeles-based digital artist Refik Anadol. The other enhances a very different parallel exhibition – “Bigger Picture” that documents the story of Bruges, including its art, from 900 to 1550.
Connected Worlds of Bruges. Review by Barbara Lewis. – londongrip.co.uk
Anadol, like everyone else, relies on all that has gone before, but his greatest creative excitement is for the here and now.
“I was not present at the birth of painting or sculpture, but I have witnessed the birth of digital art,” he says.
We are told he is a post-digital artist, meaning: “The digital is not an auxiliary tool but the primary medium”. Anadol puts it slightly differently. He regards data as paint.
He realised his vocation at the age of eight when his mother brought home a Commodore computer. He says he instantly realised technology was something to embrace and he set to work modifying computer games.
“To me, it felt like a collaborator: an imaginative space,” he said.
He also empathises with Mark Rothko “who described his paintings as environments rather than images”. They allow their viewers to lose themselves in squares of colour.
Anadol’s data-driven brush allows for complex, multi-dimensional textures to pull the viewer in.
“My installations are also environments, perceptual spaces built from ethical data and sustainable computation,” he says.
They are created with a team that works with him in his Los Angeles studio.
For the “Latent City” of Bruges, they have converted thousands of museum images, archival photographs and live data into giant, hypnotic installations. They invoke the DNA, the rhythm, the poetry of a city, at once historic and evolving – unsettling and thrilling in equal measure.
Barbara Lewis © 2026.
By Barbara Lewis • added recently on London Grip, art, books, digital art, installations, photography • Tags: art, Barbara Lewis, books, digital art, installations, photography