Onset

05.10.2012 - 28.10.2012 | Ivana Franke

Gallery Niklas Belenius is proud to present “Onset”, its 3rd solo exhibition of new works by Ivana Franke.

This time Franke draws inspiration from experimental methods and phenomena used in scientific research to test our perceptual thresholds and susceptibility to certain disorders, employing black and white striped patterns. Rather than using them to indicate our limits, she uses these phenomena to elicit threshold experiences as an onset to the journey trough the cracks in our sense of stability of visual reality, thus expanding the notion of reality itself.

The piece Onset borrows the form of the optokinetic drum - a rotating instrument with black and white stripes used as an estimate of visual acuity. The eyes are subjected to a moving visual field while the person viewing it remains stationary. Franke has modified the frequency of its stripes and the rotation speed of the object. Looking at the object for sufficient length of time causes strong afterimage effect and thus adds a layer of vibrations which accompanies our visual field while viewing the exhibition.

The series of prints Waking Background and the artist book Distant Feeling are a spatial translation of the temporal sequence of flashing light used in the previous installation Seeing with Eyes Closed into black and white striped patterns. The translation of the installation to drawings uses rectangular wave gratings. These rectangular waves are drawn in the range of spatial frequencies between 12 and 50 cycles per degree of visual angle. In Distant Feeling they span throughout the length of 560 cm and the visitors/readers are invited to observe each page for 5 seconds, while the prints Waking Background take up our full frontal visual field, thus giving appearance to illusory moiré-like patterns.

The ephemeral experience induced by the pieces raises the further question regarding similar perceptual experiences in response to frequencies of different visual stimuli. One wonders whether there is an underlying similarity in the corresponding neural activity induced by the stimuli in the cortex of the observer. One of the most fascinating scientific puzzles is to understand how these cortical rhythms translate into the conscious experience of seeing images in space, where there is nothing. It is precisely this experience that is the point of both scientific and artistic interest: Seeing images, with eyes closed or open, in absence of isomorphic stimuli in spatial locations where the images appear. (From the text by Ida Momennejad and Ivana Franke)


Ivana Franke was born in Zagreb in 1973 and currently lives in Berlin. She represented Croatia at the 52nd Venice Biennale and at the 9th Architecture Venice Biennale. Herother solo exhibitions include Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; Niklas Belenius Gallery, Stockholm; Museum of Contemporary Art, Rijeka; P.S.1 Center forContemporary Art, New York.