CRIPPLES - BALLAD
Video, 2024
About the artwork
Cripples - Ballad by Ümüt Yildiz is a deeply personal journey into the artist’s dual creative worlds, merging traditional methods with fresh, experimental approaches. The work symbolizes a universe brought to life, marking both an artistic expansion and the closure of the first chapter in the Cripples series.
Each element within Cripples - Ballad serves as a nuanced representation of human emotions, inviting the viewer into a contemplative space where "cripples" are not limitations but reflections of the universal human experience. These figures—fragmented yet profound—inhabit a unique visual world, allowing audiences to see themselves through their struggles, triumphs, and vulnerabilities. This work is a narrative of resilience and awareness, one that calls upon the viewer to find joy in the imperfections that make us inherently human.
Yildiz’s technique—layering older styles with new visual motifs—gives depth and complexity to each piece, forming a bridge between past and present artistic visions. In Cripples - Ballad, "cripples" exist as poetic beings within a broader, unseen universe, creating an experience that is both introspective and uplifting. This series brings an important conclusion to the artist’s creative introspection, laying the groundwork for future exploration within the Cripples universe.
AI generated music by Ümüt Yildiz
Audio explanation
Listen to Ümüt Yildiz discuss this work.
Ümüt Yildiz is a lecturer of Creative Coding in Design at Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences and lives in Cologne and Berlin, where he has been exploring artificial intelligence since 2018. Outside of his teaching, he often collaborates with artists such as Cro, and Bilderbuch and brands such as Bulgari, Tods, and Vogue Italia, testing the limits of current technologies.
He participated as an exhibitor in the NFT Pavilion 2022 Venice Biennale. His work is characterized by themes of humanism and controversy through the use of original production. The intervention of artificial intelligence in the visual material of original production allows an interpretation of reality free from the mechanisms of rationalist self-determination of man, introducing the concept of "memory" of the machine, which does not preserve any experience paradigms or culture inherent in human nature. Visual works are created that catalyze the world of the irrational and the unconscious, where the need to create order is less, leaving room for a more intuitive and ancient vision of the subject.