“ By default, we have no sense of an inner space inside us. (There is also no color inside our body as there is no light reaching inside, beyond the skin layer.) So then that suggests we carry a perceptual void inside us. Then space, as we normally can sense it, starts right outside our bodies. Thus the now possible scientific simulation of the inside of our bodies literally fills a void,and how could it not change our awareness and sense of our bodies, at least over time. ”
—Read an exclusive interview with Kurt Hentschläger here.
Chicago based Austrian artist Kurt Hentschläger creates audiovisual performances and installations. He began to exhibit his work in 1983, creating surreal machine-objects, and since has been working with time-based media, film, video, animation and sound. The immersive nature of his work reflects on the metaphor of the sublime and the human condition. His current work further researches human perception and the impact of new technologies on both individual and collective consciousness.
Between 1992 and 2003 he worked collaboratively as one half of “Granular-Synthesis”. Employing large scale projected images and drone like sound-scapes, Granular-Synthesis performances and installations confronted the viewer on both a physical and emotional level, overwhelming the audience with sensory stimulation.
Selected presentations include the Venice Biennial, the Venice Theater Biennial, National Art Museum of China Beijing, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, PS1 New York, Creative Time, Inc. New York, MAC – Musée d’Art Contemporain Montreal, MAK – Museum of Applied Arts Vienna, National Museum for Contemporary Art Seoul, ICC Tokyo, Fondation Beyeler Basel, Arte Alameda Mexico City. In 2010 he won a Quartz Electronic Music Award for his most recent work.
James Turrell and Kurt Hentschläger: conceptions of Space and Light
James Turrell has an historic importance in visual studies and history of art, in a sense of how we conceive “spaces” helped by the omnipresence of light and shadows. He liberates light from canvas and spread it in a three dimension reality, as if it were unusual. We can experience here the creation of a concept of “outside” space -and I had to made the decision of being dualistic right here and treat the world in terms of “outside” and “inside”, so I can talk clearly about both artists.
What happens with Kurt Hentschläger’s Zee is quite different, and complements these fundamental intuitions. Zee is an installation that mix fog and light. The visitors lose the sense of space, and experience a formation of geometric patterns instead. This amusement “inside” conception of space helps us to elucidate and deconstruct by ourselves and our own perspective how we configure reality while we are observing and being part of it.
