Jenny Michel & Micha Hoepfel: Staub (Dust) / Galerie Gillian Morris / Art Cologne 2009

At Art Cologne 2009 Galerie Gillian Morris from Berlin presents a group of work by Jenny Michel and Micha Hoepfel.

In their artistic work Jenny Michel and Micha Hoepfel move within the grey area where art and science meet, exploring what lies between one’s own imagination and empirically ‘verified’ knowledge.

The artists question the ignorance and hubris of the scientific world as well as the uncritical belief in science. They seek to create new spaces for thought and imagination, to weave together different Ҭperceptions of reality and to create a shift in the meaning of prevalent explanatory models. Scientific ways of thinking and methods of representation serve as their structure, which they draw on, imitate Ҭand adapt. The result is a series of installations in which several different media enter into a dialogue.

In the installation Staub (dust), which consists of several parts, Jenny Michel and Micha Hoepfel explore the concept of dust, the inconspicuous phenomenon which – forming the beginning and end of all existence – represents the vertices of life and the universe.

A three-channel video work shows the three different states of dust: dust that takes on a life of its own and repossesses an abandoned room, dust in a medial process, and finally in its transformation into ‘Crystal City’, an artificial ‘cleanroom’-world. In the work ‘Pulvarium,’ a systematic representation and categorisation of different kinds of dust is presented – a free interpretation of the Linnaean system – in insect boxes, impaled and labelled. The ‘Kristallflusen’ (crystal fluff) hang from the ceiling. These particularly rare and valuable dust formations – cast in resin – are presented in a state that is able to transcend time.

In Memory/Intervention, an 8mm film, dust particles on the film material suddenly begin to intervene in the Ҭaction of the film. Finally, scientific sketches take a semi-fictive approach to the phenomenon of dust form Ҭthe theoretical background of the work.

Art Cologne 2009, April 22, 2009.

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