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Showing:

John Duncan
Miriam Bäckström
Loulou Cherinet
Carl Michael von Hausswolff
Johanna Gustafsson Fürst

Miriam Bäckström, Negatives, 2010

Artissima
via Bertola 34
I -10122 Torino
www.artissima.it

Ivana Franke
14 October – 7 November 2010
Opening 14 October 5-8pm

Gallery Niklas Belenius is pleased to present the second solo exhibition at the gallery by Ivana Franke.

There is a story about a certain optical phenomena that happens while looking at someone or yourself in the mirror long enough,  and at some point, this person´s image disappears, dissolves into a fog. Ephemerality of appearances and finitude of forms and the way they are experienced, understood and responded to or simply made in time are frequent topics in Ivana Franke´s work.

The series of drawings presented in this exhibition – Thinking dimensions (n-cube) - speak about the process of slowly getting lost in complex abstract counter-intuitive conceptions of space, represented through several projection graphs. These graphs are used in visualizing structures of the higher dimensional regular polytopes. In each drawing one dimension is added, the addition of lines unfold further spaces and the lines multiply until they finally become happily raveled or blur together.

Franke´s work investigates the concept of visibility and space. The sculptural piece Boxed-in infinite polyhedron is an object made of transparent acrylic glass and is a fragment of space filling polyhedra, which is in theory, by mathematical definition infinite. The rigid materiality and solidity of the object is partially canceled out by the transparency and reflectivity of the acrylic glass as they bring forth an encounter with many faces simultaneously. Reflections follow the viewers pace of movement and extend the gaze in time, while empty space and reified volume exchange in perception.

Tensegrity wall is a construction made of steel rods connected with thin wire that engraves the space. The large-scale installation physically divides the gallery, breaks the shortest path, and directs the visitors movement. At the same time it opens the space into itself, into multiply new spaces inside of it. The construction could be used for measuring through the space – the distance between you and me at the moment, as it renders spatial relations visible.

Her exhibitions include P.S.1 Center for Contemporary Art, New York; the Venice Architecture Biennale; Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; the Venice Biennale; Reykjavik Experiment Marathon; Manifesta 7

Ivana Franke was born in 1973 in Zagreb and she currently lives and works in Berlin.

More info:
http://www.ivanafranke.net/
http://www.niklasbelenius.com/cgi-bin/index.pl?id=55

A Unicorn Basking in the Light of Three Glowing Suns
(Curated By: Anthony Elms and Philip von Zweck)
The DeVos Art Museum at Northern Michigan University, Marquette, MI, USA
October 8- November 14, 2010

Dimension/Next*

Miller-Urey Bong, 2010

* a collaboration between Paul B. Davis and AIDS-3D

In 1952 Stanley L. Miller, working in the laboratory of Harold C. Urey at the University of Chicago, attempted to clarify the chemical reactions that gave rise to organic compounds on primitive Earth. The experiment ran as a closed loop connecting two flasks. One flask contained water that represented Earth’s ocean, a second flask contained a mixture of methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), and hydrogen (H2) that represented a hypothetical ‘reductive’ atmosphere. Miller heated the water to simulate evaporation and rainfall, and used electrodes to simulate lightning, guessing that lightning was a likely energy source for ancient chemical reactions. After running the experiment for one week Miller found that as much as 15% of the carbon in the system now existed in the form of organic compounds. While the Miller-Urey Experiment did not conclusively prove the chemical makeup of primordial Earth, it became a classic experiment on the origin of life.

‘We really don’t know what the Earth was like three or four billion years ago. So there are all sorts of theories and speculations. The uncertainty concerns what the atmosphere was like. This is the major area of dispute.’ – Stanley L. Miller

Miller-Urey Bong allows experimentation with genesis models of the early Earth atmosphere by re-creating the Miller-Urey experiment with the additional functionality of adding any combustive material to the atmospheric simulation. The material is heated using a high-powered laser and the vaporized remnants are drawn into the experimental apparatus through the combined use of a specially designed stem system, carburetion port, and user provided suction. Employing the same suction, users can also orally sample the experiment’s contents at any time for further analysis.

Dimension/Next specifically proposes that the addition of C21H30O2 to the existing Miller-Urey hypothesis of CH4 + NH3 + H2 + H20 has a high chance of producing exceptional results. However, in the interest of scientific objectivity, Miller-Urey Bong is BYOW (Bring Your Own Whatever).

Due to the inherent dangers of Class 4 laser technology, stringent controlled conditions and safety procedures govern the interaction of Miller-Urey Bong. The work will be fully interactive only at specific periods during the installation, however performance documentation will be on view at all times.