Deep Blue v Kasparov

This print is a part of The Artling's Prints Project (A.P.P.).

Edition of 100 + 2 AP

Digital archival print

Framed Print: US$ 365. Get in touch at contact@theartling.com if you'd like us to organize framing for you!


Artist Statement:
"'First of all, even the greatest International Grandmasters, however deeply they analyse a position, can seldom see to the end of the game. So their decision about each move is partly based on intuition.’
- Stanley Kubrick

This photographic work is part of my ongoing Endgame series depicting the last moves of famous or key chess matches in history. It was first developed during my residency with the CCA this year.

The particular image reenacts the famous endgame in 1997 of the Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov in black and an IBM supercomputer called Deep Blue. It was the last of six games and the first time a human being lost to a computer in a tournament. The number of chess pieces left suggests how quick the game was over. This is a moment that could be seen as an abstract diagram of grids and objects or a scene derived from a series of logical moves, which itself becomes a strategy to create the work. It also explores themes of artificial intelligence, demise and the idea of the cul-de-sac or 'no way out' that could refer to the game, stage or life itself. In photography, it follows Rosalind Krauss' statement on how photography leaves its identity as an aesthetic object to become a theoretical object instead. Here grey is also explored through the contrasts of light and dark and recalls Nobuyoshi Araki's claim that a black and white image represents death and that it is akin to killing the subject. The work was first featured in an open studio installation as homage to the ideas of Marcel Duchamp and John Cage in regards to the readymade and chance operations."