Rob and Nick Carter | Kristina Beaufort

Rob and Nick Carter are a British duo who connect technological innovation with art-historical heritage. Their Transforming series subtly animates historical paintings, drawings and photographs, creating a dialogue between traditional imagery and digital technology.

Working across digital animation, robotics, light and movement, they take familiar imagery and traditional forms and transform them into works that unfold and evolve over time. Historical images stop being fixed objects belonging to the past and become experiences that continue to change.

A still life that has hung unaltered for four centuries begins, almost imperceptibly, to move. The work asks for the kind of looking that painting once demanded and screens have taught us to skip.

Works in the exhibition

A small Dutch still life in a heavy black and gilt frame: a dead frog on a stone ledge, watched by flies.

The same still life later in its cycle — the frog reduced to bones scattered across the ledge.

Transforming Vanitas Painting · 2012–13

RN915

2½ hour looped film, computer, frame · after Ambrosius Bosschaert the Younger (1609–45), Dead Frog with Flies, c.1630, oil on copper, Fondation Custodia, Paris

19 × 24 × 3½ inches · 48 × 61 × 8 cm (framed)

Edition of 12 + 5 AP · ED #12

Over two and a half hours the frog decays to bone and returns. Stand in front of it long enough and you notice you are the only thing in the room that has not changed.

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A dense swirl of brightly coloured paint — blues, oranges, greens and pinks folding into one another.

Thick ribbons of red, green, blue and yellow paint curling across the frame.

Chroma Viscosity · 2024

RN1572

33-minute looped film in 4K, monitor with player, frame

48 × 32 × 4¾ inches · 121.5 × 81.5 cm

Edition of 12 + 5 APs · ED #1

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Prices are on request. Write to kb@kbeaufort.com.