When fake feels real: 'Rohtko' brings one of art's big questions to Seoul
A scene from Lukasz Twarkowski’s production "Rohtko" / Courtesy of LG Arts Center
Ahead of multimedia production's Korean premiere, Polish director discusses exploration of authenticity in AI age
A painting does not change when it is exposed as a fake. Its price and the way people see it do.
That gap between an object and the value attached to it drives “Rohtko,” Polish director Lukasz Twarkowski’s multimedia theater production, which makes its Korean premiere Friday at LG Arts Center Seoul. Inspired by a multimillion-dollar forgery scandal, the production arrives here four years after its world premiere, with its questions about originals and copies taking on fresh urgency amid the increase of artificial intelligence (AI).
Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Twarkowski explored multiple perspectives on authenticity, inviting audiences to draw their own conclusions.
“I truly believe that we have this possibility in theater to communicate contradictions,” he said, describing art as a way to explore complexity without declaring one single interpretation to be true.
Produced by Latvia’s Dailes Theatre, “Rohtko” premiered in March 2022. It won five Latvian theater awards that year, including production and directing honors, followed by Italy’s Ubu Award for best foreign production in 2024. Invitations to London’s Barbican, Paris’ Odeon and other major European venues followed.
The production draws on the real life story of a painting sold by New York’s Knoedler Gallery as a Mark Rothko for $8.3 million in 2004. It was later exposed as a forgery painted by Chinese-born math teacher and artist Pei-Shen Qian.
A philosophical starting point for the director was the book, “Shanzhai: Deconstruction in Chinese," (2011) by philosopher Han Byung-chul who resides in Germany and is active in Europe. For Twarkowski, Han offers an alternative to European understandings of authenticity as centered on a unique physical object. An idea might survive through recreation rather than preservation.
“The copy can have the same or even higher value than the original,” he said, describing the possibility he encountered in Han’s writing. “Maybe this is another way of seeing as well the value in digital worlds, which is much closer to what we are living through now than the very old original-centered way of seeing the world through European eyes.”
Director Lukasz Twarkowski speaks during a press conference about his production "Rohtko" ahead of its Korean premiere at LG Arts Center in Seoul, Wednesday. Courtesy of LG Arts Center
That tension becomes visible onstage, where live cameras project actors onto large screens. Audiences can watch both the performance and its manufacture, yet the mediated image may feel more convincing than the action unfolding before them.
Combining live camera feeds, giant screens, neon-lit sets and pulsating techno music, “Rothko” blurs the boundaries between theater, cinema and nightclub performance, drawing standing ovations on its international tour and critical acclaim for its visual creativity. However, he believes technology is not automatically necessary.
“If you can do something without the video or without technology, just do it without,” he said. “It’s going to be much better.”
A scene from Lukasz Twarkowski’s production "Rohtko" / Courtesy of LG Arts Center
The production’s three-hour, 55-minute running time, including intermission, similarly grew from the creative process rather than a predetermined ambition. Initially conceived as a small experiment, it expanded as new scenes and stories developed.
“I never want to make it long. It happens and it’s really not a joke,” he said. “To bring you for this journey, in order to let you get in this very unique state of dreamery, it needs to give you and your senses time to soak in and you cannot rush it.”
While “Rohtko” invites audiences to question the difference between copy and original, Twarkowski cautioned that such an invitation should ot extend to accepting AI-generated misinformation. He warned that the rapid spread of fabricated online content, often produced on a massive scale to generate advertising revenue, threatens to make trustworthy sources difficult to find.
On AI, he said, “it can be a beautiful tool when you really use it as a tool.” He also recalled experimenting with an AI collaborator named Daisy for another production and finding its suggestions entertaining but artistically unproductive.
“At some point, we fired Daisy from the production,” he said.
As technology advances, he believes live human contact will become more precious, potentially even a luxury.
“Humans are expensive but beautiful as well,” he said.
“Rohtko” runs from Friday to Sunday at LG Signature Hall, performed in Latvian, English, Polish and Chinese with Korean and English subtitles.