WE ARE THE PAINTERS OF THE FUTURE / SONGSHAN LAKE BOXES ART MUSEUM

We
are
the
Painters
of
the
Future

Songshan
Lake
Boxes
Art
Museum
Dongguan
June 15 –
Sep 14
2025

Curated by
Selima Niggl

The Beautiful Formula Collective (2012)

No one before us has composed movement in painting

– Oleksiy Koval, 2017

Michael Gene Aichner, Karina Bugayova, Daniel Geiger, Gonghong Huang, Oleksiy Koval, Kuros Nekouian, Thomas Rieger, Stefan Schessl, Veronika Wenger, Pascal Worsch, Michael Wright

The Beautiful Formula Collective (BFC) is about painting and creating collective art works based on the Beautiful Formula Language.

They combine spontaneity, improvisation with the logic of rhythm, which gives them structure and rules while painting.

The Beautiful Formula Collective produces and stages group works not only in the studio, but also as a live painting performance in front of the public.

Although the collective, founded in Munich in 2012, has no direct connection to the other artist groups presented so far, its focus is the same as theirs: collaborative painting on the same surface, which is perhaps the greatest challenge in this field.

While the other groups have intuitively found a common visual language that enables a collective painting process, the BFC has also developed this language on a theoretical level.

Based on a logical yet open system, BFC artists are able to write compositions that are then executed as paintings. These compositions usually determine the location, intensity, and duration of a single painting action.

Spontaneous and reflexive reactions to the individual compositional guidelines can and should occur. The common language is intended to be an aid, to prevent Babylonian confusion, but it is not an immutable law: “We have compositions, which are kinds of traffic regulations to avoid accidents, but everyone is allowed to break the law for the love of the completed painting. You run a red light when you have to catch a bus.” (Oleksiy Koval 2022) .

Time and again, BFC artists break down genre boundaries by expanding their painting activities to include musical or dance elements. They collaborate with the US saxophonist Steve Coleman and the Ukrainian dancer Alina Sokulska, who lives in Spain.

In live painting performances, as in jazz, the aim is to improvise together on the basis of a composition and to follow each other’s cues. At the same time, Sokulska works with the Beautiful Formula Language in her choreography The book of sand, Madrid 2024, which she in turn translates into dance movements.

Artistic boundaries are overcome through BFC’s group collaboration. Each member is encouraged to contribute their personal history to the collaborative process. At the same time, however, they are forced to abandon their own well-trodden paths and take risks. Linguistic, cultural, social, and generational boundaries are also overcome, and—in keeping with the spirit of historical artist groups—art is expanded into a social sphere.

Dr. Selima Niggl