SPACE IS THE PLACE (MILCHSTRAßENVERKEHRSORDNUNG) - Group Exhibition - Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin
09/2019 - 11/2019
The question around which the work arises is: how would a landscape look like when the basic elements are not there, but just the force behind them? The ether is an ambiguous entity, which operates in between matter and its absence: It is said to make matter possible but it is not recognised as a physical element.
For the whole series of paintings I have combined two of the four colours, the ones which appears when chromatic aberrations are happening. These “errors” are generated by our own eyes when our perception is in extreme conditions. The "Ether Project" is therefore based on a set of colours which appears when we can hardly see.
Photo: @ David Brandt
The future of mankind lies in outer space: that’s at least what the American physicist and bestselling author Michio Kaku believes; in his book Farewell to Earth he presents tempting ideas on how we can conquer the stars – an undertaking that certainly doesn’t happen without complications.
The exhibition therefore uses a dual title that, on the one hand, refers to Stanisław Lem’s term “Milky Way Traffic Code”, which refers to the impossibility of limiting damage when crossing cosmic borders, and yet does not leave us hoping for redemption in higher spheres, which Sun Ra raves about with his directional display “Space is the place”.
Guided by economic or political interests, the space industry is booming like never before. Almost every month we hear about new scientific achievements. There can be no more doubts – a new space age has dawned and, within the framework of a Commercial Crew programme, those adventurers who pay dearly for flying to the international space station ISS will be able to do so in 2019 already. And equally attractive for space visionaries are manned flights to distant planets such as Mars. The first unmanned and manned tests of the technologies are planned for the next decade.
In the arts, too, distant galaxies as symbols, projection surfaces and symbolic spaces have recently been booming again. Parallel to science, artists, musicians, science fiction authors, filmmakers and comic-strip artists are simultaneously using and criticizing space as a reflector of the human unconscious. This inscribes not only a scientific-critical but also a socio-critical dimension into the presentation of their works.
Music and sounds that explicitly deal with the theme of “Universe – Earth – Man” are an important field of experience for the exhibition. In the 1960s and 1970s, this triad was a huge topic in music, especially rock music, and is experiencing a renaissance with current forms of space and psychedelic rock. For more than 60 years Sun Ra and his fleet of 26 Arkestras have been giving a lunar Free Jazz orientation. They can be interpreted as instructions to multiply mind matter relationships beyond the limits of physics.
The exhibition presents works of painting, photography, drawings, objects, videos, record covers and sounds.
(Text from the catalogue of the exhibition)
curated and organised by: Christoph Tannert
Artists: Guy Allott (GB) / Andreas Ammer, Andreas Gerth, Martin Gretschmann (D) / Song Ming Ang (SGP) / Lucas Foletto Celinski (BR) / Gregor Hildebrandt (D) / Via Lewandowsky (D) / Bjørn Melhus (D) / Nik Nowak (D) / Johan Österholm (S) / Thomas Ravens (D) / Nik Raicevic alias Nik Pascal (USA) / Gerd Rohling (D) / Igor Sacharow-Ross (RU/D) / Bettina Scholz (D) / Annette Schröter (D) / Sebastian Szary (D) / Jared Theis (USA) / Saverio Tonoli (I) / Brigitte Waldach (D) / Aribert von Ostrowski (D)
Ascent, 2018 | ink on Xuan paper, metal structure, 200 x 300 cm.