The Ruins are a series of still lifes, a reinterpretation of a classical memento mori, traditionally a means of contemplating the passage of time and cultural decay. In this group of images, Hart revises the canons of Modernist painting by means of the kind of low-resolution polygon models normally used in massive-multiplayer online games. She does this by copying Modernist masterpieces as 3D computer models and recomposing them with software to produce elegant still lives in the form of high-resolution TIFF files. Hart then extracts layers of value and colour from her TIFFs and remixes them on wooden panels with a unique, archival printing process.

In a flirtatious simulation of forgery, Hart has –by means of computer modelling– hand-crafted symbolic approximations of copyright-protected paintings. Taken from works by art history’s patriarchs, most notably Matisse and Picasso, Hart metaphorically plays with the idea of painting as an authentic object. She does this by referring to cultural constructions of forgery, but also of copyright infringement. If one imagines copyright as marking the birth of Modernism developed in response to the capacities of photography, Hart symbolically ensures the unique status of her own interpretations by means of an even newer technology, the NFT.

Made in response to what in the public imagination is the threatening capacity of the computer to fake the real, and invoking both the spirit of Robert Rauchenberg’s Combines and Joseph Kosuth’s installation One and Three Chairs, Hart proposes a digital simulation of the simulated 3D work. This new simulation is enacted as authentic by means of its NFT minting as a singular piece. Her Ruins Combines are an astute assessment of our current moment, embodying an ‘authentic’ version of painting for the age of the computer.