Introduction

For this year’s summer exhibition Esther Schipper shows works by Matti Braun, Angela Bulloch and Christopher Keller. The scientific foundations of these works lay the basis for empirically comparable plans for getting closer to a specific phenomenon and engaging with its subsequent emersion.

Generated using Celestia—a space travel simulation program—and based on real coordinates, the 12 prints Night Sky Prints, E.T. From Mercury.12 (2007) by Angela Bulloch together show a view into the universe from the planet Mercury, including views of Earth and the sun. Celestia was used as it works as a software-version of a planetarium, though better in effect as it can generate virtual space. It is one image split up into 12 parts. The earth is the only planet not rendered and can be found in the print 2:3. The other celestial bodies have gone through several translations and filters, losing the original appearance for a simplified representation of them, without changing the size or their location.

With works that alternate between object and furniture, Matti Braun offers only the formal suggestion of scientific precision. Despite the material uniformity and the similarly formal execution of the objects assigned to both rooms, each individual work is unique. The cabinets hanging on the wall in the small room contain prepared, homogenous butterflies presented as if they were objects in a natural history museum. The found material is arranged in a specific context and manages to translate serialism, the character trait of the natural sciences, into an aesthetic composition.

Christopher Keller’s series of works Ohne Titel (Inverse Observatories (2007) is centred around the inversion of the gaze and is situated at the interface of art and science. Here, the artist investigates the architecture of various observatories. At the same time, he arrives at the immanent fulfilment of the specific rules of the image of serial art, in whose process the subject itself renounces depiction. The permanent recall of the object makes its laws and rules visible.