The artist ANTOINETTE, together with her technology partner BizzTech, have created a photorealistic museum space of  unprecedented image quality in the Metaverse for the ALTAR of EUROPA.

The ALTAR of EUROPA is a real existing, 100m² drawing consisting of millions of individual pencil strokes created by ANTOINETTE during three years of work . The image density of this monumental work of art is an ideal example to demonstrate the power of the browser-based multi-polygon technology used.  

In the digital world, every detail of the drawing becomes visible and perspectives and sections can be explored that would not be accessible when visiting the physical exhibition. In this virtual space, museum visitors, regardless of their location, meet with their digital twins, their avatars. With their avatars and an integrated translation tool, visitors can communicate about what they see and what moves them, without being restricted by language barriers. 

ANTOINETTE thus offers one of the first metaverse-based communication platforms for people interested in visual art and takes the perception of artworks to a new level.  

The opening of the digital art museum with the ALTAR of EUROPA 3.0 will take place online in Metaverse on March 16, 2023.

Visitors* can either participate as avatars or watch live stream. You can participate in the live stream if you register for the event. 

Register on LinkedIn

Or BOOK one of the 70 avatars by email

avatar@mythos-europa.org 

Public viewing: The live stream of the online event can be watched at the Merseburg Ständehaus, Oberaltenburg 2, 06217 Merseburg. We are looking forward to one of the first hybrid events in which spectators in the physical world and from virtual ones are involved. 

ANTOINETTE – Biography

ANTOINETTE’s pictures touch, polarize, affect, are concrete because of their representational nature, tell stories and create unusual perspectives. That is why they are the ideal introduction to the social discussion about European identity and the future of society on our continent. The scenes and stories are deliberately not told to the end. They leave room for interpretation, for individual views on the everyday and big issues in our time. 

ANTOINETTE provides her inner images, which can be understood as reflections and feedbacks on the state of our society. Mythological Elements span the arc to the beginnings of our common origin on this continent of Europe. She confronts the traditions of European painting in order to refer to this cultural-historical heritage. She understands art as communication between generations and across all  language barriers of national borders. 

The painter is a representative of the “Leipzig School”. Her paintings and her visual language are in the tradition of her teachers Heisig, Mattheuer and Tübke. Her training as a portrait painter with her master father Bernhard Heisig (whose portrait of Helmut Schmidt is exhibited in the Federal Chancellery), are the basis for extensive portrait series that have been created in recent years.  

Among them is the “Berlin Sittengemälde”, which was exhibited with great success in Berlin in 2003 and then in Washington D.C. and New York. ANTOINETTE is counted among the most successful and well-known portrait painters of our time. Her works can be seen in many public places. For example, a portrait of Antje Vollmer hangs in the German Bundestag. Her works as a sculptor are no less successful.  

A bust of Egon Bahr adorns his grave of honor, and a sculpture by Hanna-Renate Laurien stands in the Berlin House of Representatives. Since the German reunification ANTOINETTE has been artistically dealing with the cultural identity of our European continent. In the process, an extensive work entitled “Myth of Europe“ has been created, the content of which cannot be surpassed in terms of topicality. 

The Vision: ALTAR of EUROPA 1.0 – 5.0

ANTOINETTE has been working as an artist on the vision “ALTAR of EUROPE” since 2017. The work on this vision has different phases in which the versions 1.0 to 5.0 of the “ALTAR of EUROPE” are created and which are presented in the following:

1.0 The physical drawing, 100m2 in size, created between 2017 and 2020. 

2.0 The light installation, which is based on the physical drawing in almost any size can be produced. This version exists since February 2022 model scale 1:7. 

3.0 The digital reproduction in virtual space. This version will be presented on 16.03.2023 in a virtual art gallery in the metaverse for the first time, at least in a proof of concept version (POC), will be accessible. 

4.0 The spatially experienceable version of version 3.0. The conceptual work on this version have already begun. A first test with a panel of the ALTAR of EUROPA should take place soon. As soon as a  financing for the 3D-graphics of the entire work exists, this will be implemented and presented on the platform muse.um. 

5.0 Version 4.0, the spatial experience of the work, is animated. Figures and landscapes start to move. The conceptual work begins when the implementation of version 4.0 is underway. 

ALTAR of EUROPA – History of Origins

The “Altar of Europe” consists of 13 parts and has a total length of 20 meters and a height of 5 meters. Technique: pen on paper. The monumental work was created between 2018 and 2020. ANTOINETTE needed 100m2 of paper and about 1500 pens to complete it. 

ANTOINETTE produced the individual parts at different locations (in different countries) always without preliminary designs, directly, in order to make clear the large European network and the contextual connection of the common history of art and culture, and at the same time to react to the mood at the respective location. At the center of the work are “The Seven Guardians of the Days of the Week” who watch over negativity. The seven guardians were created at the beginning of 2018 in Prague and Leipzig, in preparation for the exhibition “Myth of Europe” at the Montanelli Museum in Prague in the same year. They are large-format pencil drawings about 180 cm high and up to 150 cm wide.

Negativity is the theme of the “Görlitz Frieze”. It bears as its title a quotation from Jakob Böhme from 1684: “Oh pride, you are hellish fire.” The frieze was created in the summer and fall of 2018 in three months of daily work in front of a running audience in the exhibition “Mythos Europa” in the City Hall of Görlitz (Germany) directly on the border with the Polish sister city Zgorzelec. 

The altar is crowned by the “Viennese Frieze”, created during the two-month exhibition “Faces of Europe” 2019 in the Museums quartier in Vienna (Austria). It is entitled: “Victory of Love” and encourages and supports the “guardians” in the containment of negativity in which it centrally thematizes “love” and places it at their side. 

For the production of the last parts and for the completion of the total work of art all parts had to be brought in original -size to their place, in order to coordinate them with each other. The necessary space for this was provided by the city of Merseburg (Germany) with the Schloßgartensalon. The first assembly of all finished parts of the altar in mid-July 2020 represented a world premiere. The work was completed in December 2020 and took place in public. The last four panels deal with the Merseburg spells. Just as in the other places where the ALTAR of EUROPE was created, unmistakable specifics in Merseburg also flow into this European synthesis of the arts.

The figure theater created with the altar refers to ideas deeply rooted in the collective unconscious, which we have deeply imprinted in our minds through a multitude of works by European artists of past centuries. The old figures give us their stories to take with us into our new world, which ANTOINETTE explores and translates. As a result, the language of these images is at once surprisingly new – as well as commonplace and easy to read. We are human beings, today as in the future, just as we were a long time ago, searching for orientation, clarity, for ourselves and for meaning. Thereby, despite this exotic imagery of this female interpretation, we can be sure of a certain degree of continuity and find  support. In Vienna, the international audience affectionately called ANTOINETTE, while they watched her drawing the 20 m long frieze every day for more than two months:  “MADAME BOSCH”. 

About 100,000 visitors* found access to the discussion of the most important questions of our time through their participation in the creation of the altar. Through these intense encounters, impulses constantly flow back and forth between art and audience and art.  After its completion, the physical work ALTAR der EUROPA is still looking for its final exhibition space. In order for the public to continue to study the work, ANTOINETTE, together with a technology partner, has created an exhibition hall in metaverse. Every detail becomes visible and perspectives and sections can be experienced that are not visible when visiting the physical exhibition. In this virtual space, museum visitors, regardless of their location, meet with their digital twins, their avatars. With their avatars and an integrated translation tool, visitor stalk about what they see and what moves them without a language barrier.

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