Arab Bank Switzerland

Official account of Arab Bank Switzerland
- Swiss private bank active in traditional and digital assets
- Exploring digital art and culture

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

Read Kent’s article in full here: https://t.co/kCwcUPFXLx

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

“What looks immaterial on a screen actually depends on a vast infrastructure of material systems and human labor.”

When people think about AI-generated art, they usually think about the resulting output: the image generated by a technical process deemed mysterious or unimportant. But what if the most revealing part of the work happens long before the finished picture appears?

Charlotte Kent, editor of the new monograph “Sofia Crespo × Anna Ridler: A Field of Collaboration,” reflects on how the duo’s attention to process upends tech’s fever dream of effortless automation.

@Lucy2Scribbles @annaridler @soficrespo91
#ABSEditorial

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

Sofia and Anna joined editor Charlotte Kent (@Lucy2Scribbles) for a conversation on authorship, process and what it means to collaborate – both with each other and with machine systems.

Our thanks to all who attended.

Photo: Silke Briel

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

Earlier this month we launched “Sofia Crespo x Anna Ridler: A Field of Collaboration” at HALLEN07. Published by @HatjeCantz, the publication is the first monograph on Sofia Crespo (@soficrespo91) and Anna Ridler (@annaridler), commissioned and developed as part of their 2025 Artist of the Year.

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

Thank you to everyone who joined us, and to Eva & Franco for a memorable evening.

Trophy design by Sven Adolph

Photo: Silke Briel
#berlinartweek

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

Celebrating our 2026 Artist if the Year.

Last week we closed our first Berlin Art Week with the ceremony honouring Eva & Franco Mattes – a duo whose work examines how media shapes human connection, and lays bare the consequences of technological change rather than celebrating it.

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

The award also reflects a wider purpose: to champion digital art within the larger contemporary art landscape.

The year ahead brings a newly commissioned work for the Arab Bank Switzerland Art Collection, developed with the artists over exhibitions and public programming to come.

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

Read in full on the ABS Substack: https://t.co/Mh03HqX7mZ

Cover images from the artists' “Eva & Franco & Computers” project, an archive of hundreds of photos of the duo in front of computers taken from 1999 to today.

#ABSEditorial

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

“AI isn’t necessarily proving that machines are creative; it might just be showing us that human creativity was never quite as mysterious or original as we imagined.”

Eva & Franco Mattes, Arab Bank Switzerland’s 2026 Artist of the Year, talk authorship, automation, and their three-decade career spent finding new ways to misuse the internet.

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

While they are rightly heralded as Net Art pioneers, the Italian-American duo’s willingness to work at the bleeding edge of online culture has made them consistently early to grasp how new technologies would reprogram their human users.

The result is a body of work that reads as a counter-history of the internet itself.

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

Read in full on the ABS Substack: https://t.co/Mh03HqX7mZ

Cover images from the artists' “Eva & Franco & Computers” project, an archive of hundreds of photos of the duo in front of computers taken from 1999 to today.

#ABSEditorial

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

The vanishing flora of the Swiss Alps, regrown by a machine.

Curator Nina Roehrs (@NinaRoehrs)
on 83 Seeds from a Vanishing Mountain (2023) by Sofia Crespo (@soficrespo91) & Anna Ridler (@annaridler) – a work that turns to AI not to record eighty-three endangered Alpine species, but to imagine what they might yet become, holding extinction and invention in the same image. The work also examines fragmentation as a condition of digital existence.

On view at HALLEN 07, 5–13 September, Berlin.
#BerlinArtWeek #AIart️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

Join us for the launch of A Field of Collaboration, the new monograph on Sofia Crespo (@soficrespo91) and Anna Ridler (@annaridler).

Published by @HatjeCantz and edited by Charlotte Kent (@Lucy2Scribbles), the book gathers the artists' five joint projects from 2023–2025 for the first time, alongside essays by Tega Brain, Doreen Ríos, Masako Shiba and Catherine Troiano, an interview by Nina Roehrs, and extensive documentation of their process. Together they trace how Crespo and Ridler bridge machine learning with photographic practice, botanical study and other tactile traditions — moving beyond the digital sublime toward a profound attentiveness to the contemporary moment.

See the book: https://t.co/fyWsz9Cz94

Friday 11 Sept, 5pm · HALLEN 07, Berlin — panel + signing.
#BerlinArtWeek

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

The cheerful motifs of the early web, dancing across the hard-faced front pages of the news.

In Online Newspapers: Postfactual Edition (2017–18), net-art pioneer Olia Lialina (@GIFmodel) overlays Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung front pages of Trump, Putin and Kim with the amateurish glitter and modified cursors of the early web — setting the pageantry of political authority against the throwaway aesthetics of the early internet.

The triptych shows at HALLEN 07, running 5–13 September.
#BerlinArtWeek #netart

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

An evolving choreography of characters, making and unmaking a grid of windows without pause.

Andreas Gysin's (@andreasgysin) Lattice (2025) builds evolving geometric patterns from the characters of the extended ASCII set. Each screen shows only a fragment of a much larger computational surface that runs on beyond the frame — at HALLEN 07, spanning six vertical LED panels, each 2 × 3.5 metres.

HALLEN07 runs from 5 – 13 September.
Experience Lattice at https://t.co/zVLRQnLJJg
#BerlinArtWeek

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

A generative program, animated GIFs on political front pages, and AI-conjured Alpine flora — three practices, one presentation.

Arab Bank Switzerland makes its @BerlinArtWeek debut at HALLEN 07, bringing together three works that each think through technology, image and data in a different way:
▪️ Andreas Gysin (@andreasgysin) — Lattice (2025)
▪️ Olia Lialina — Online Newspapers: Postfactual Edition – Trump, Putin, Kim (2017–2018)
▪️ Anna Ridler (@annaridler) & Sofia Crespo (@soficrespo91) — 83 Seeds from a Vanishing Mountain (2023)

Curated by Nina Roehrs.

The presentation also marks the launch of a new monograph on Ridler & Crespo — ABS's 2025 Artist of the Year recipients. The book will be launched on 11 September at 5pm at HALLEN, in front of the artists' work, with a panel discussion moderated by Charlotte Kent, followed by a book signing with the artists.

HALLEN 07 | Sept. 05–13
📍 Wilhelm Hallen
#BerlinArtWeek #HALLEN07 #ArabBankSwitzerland #ABSDigitalArt

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

For the first time, Arab Bank Switzerland will take part in HALLEN, the Berlin art festival held during @berlinartweek.

At HALLEN 07, ABS will present works by Andreas Gysin (@andreasgysin), Olia Lialina (@GIFmodel), and Anna Ridler (@annaridler) & Sofia Crespo (@soficrespo91).

HALLEN 07 | 05–13/09/26
📍 Wilhelm Hallen
Opening: September 5, 11am

#ABSArtCollection

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The award carries a cash prize of 15,000 USD and will see the duo develop a newly commissioned work for the Arab Bank Switzerland Collection over a year-long engagement encompassing exhibitions, public programming and institutional collaborations.

#ABSArtistOfTheYear

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

We are pleased to announce Eva & Franco Mattes as the recipients of the 2026 Arab Bank Switzerland Artist of the Year award.

[Arab Bank Switzerland @arabbankCH]

Among the pioneers of internet art, Eva & Franco Mattes are an Italian-American artist duo living between New York and Milan. Through videos, installations and websites, their work explores and dissects our contemporary networked condition, examining the ethics and politics of life online with a darkly humorous edge.