Secular altarpiece | The Gold Metaverse, by David Breuer-Weil at SOLO CONTEMPORARY

The Gold Metaverse, 2022. Acrylic, pencil and gold leaf on six panels. Overall: 182 x 243 cm. Courtesy of VirginiaVisualArts

A major work by the artist David Breuer-Weil will serve as the centrepiece and the entrance feature of the SOLO CONTEMPORARY section at British Art Fair. The piece, titled The Gold Metaverse, is inspired by the vast 15th-century polyptych The Ghent Altarpiece, by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, which dominates the interior of St Bavo’s Cathedral in the medieval Belgian city. 

The van Eck brothers were inspired by their Christian faith; Breuer-Weil is inspired by modern technology. His website explains: ‘The Gold Metaverse explores the ground-breaking significance of the Metaverse which, like traditional human creativity, allows for the free and unlimited expression of the imagination. It is filled with significant details including real and imagined people and animals, computing, and virtual reality. Despite its futuristic subject, this tour de force of contemporary draftsmanship is imbued with a strong sense of art history.’

Like the van Eycks’ masterpiece, the contemporary piece constitutes a visual narrative, designed to be contemplated over a long period, its details accumulating in the viewer’s mind, to engender a sense of awe at powers which are out of our control, and which in turn control us.

Breuer-Weil is perhaps best known for his monumental sculptures (you may well have noticed his Alien 2, embedded headfirst into the Mayfair pavement on New Bond Street in 2021, or his egg-shaped Sister currently in Hanover Square) but is also feted for his vast painted canvases, which he dubs ‘The Projects’. These have been exhibited in venues such as The Roundhouse in Camden (2001) and the Vaults in Waterloo (2013). This latest work is part of his ‘gold period’ named after the extensive use of gold leaf in his paintings, “to express these uncanny, otherworldly apocalyptic times we are living through.”

“Our reality can be literally created by computing,” he comments, “and this may be some replacement of the traditional role of Christian thought. I wanted to create a highly detailed golden panel, a secular altarpiece of the modern age about the awesome power of computing, AI and the Metaverse.” The piece makes its debut at the Fair, under the auspices of Virginia Visual Arts. Warning: once you start looking at it, you may be there some time.