Cloudbusters: Agnes Meyer-Brandis and Edwin Deen at TAG, The Hague
Last friday, the exhibition ‘Cloudbusters’ opened in TAG, showcasing work by Dutch artist Edwin Deen and German artist Agnes Meyer-Brandis. Their work compliments each other through their artistic investigations of scientific phenomena and processes, with Deen focusing on the color palette of rainbows and Meyer-Brandis basing her work on the formation of clouds. The exhibited pieces are not so much autonomous objects but instead evidence of a wider investigation into the links between science and art.
As is extensively discussed in the exhibition’s press release, the title of the show is derived from Wilhelm Reich’s questionable scientific studies from the first half of the 20th century. His research into a ‘life energy’ which he refered to as ‘orgone’ proved to be highly controversial, as its allusions to extraterrestial life and its effects on earthly weather systems, lwhich led to a judge banning any of his writings on the subject.
The connection to Reich’s legacy in Meyer-Brandis and Deen’s work lies in the blurring of boundaries between fact and fiction. Both take a scientific concept and apply an artistic process to it, with varying degrees of playfulness.
Deen’s exhibited work consists of a sprinkler lined with color pigments which is set to go off at short intervals of time. Every ten or so minutes, water gushes through the hose, and the white walls of the gallery are transformed into a canvas. The periodic rekindling of this creative act injects the whole process with a childlike excitement; it’s as much an accidental, yet calculated, event as the actual formation of a rainbow, bestowing it with a wondrous anticipation.
An accompanying arrangement of products form an installation of almost painfully bright objects, all designed to grab your attention by their sterile use of artificial neon colors. The assembly of all these artifacts lead to an oversaturated composition which deflates the function of the palette from toxically attractive to a melting pot of clinical hues. Deen plays with the visual impact and the functionality of these objects, ‘[sorting, organizing and converting] the objects in such a way that the range of associations he triggers by his manipulation becomes apparent.’ By grouping all these objects together through their formal relationships rather than their intended use, Deen transforms the way we interpret the objects, transforming them from functional objects to sculptural artifacts.
Meyer-Brandis’ work is decidedly less colourful, and on the surface appears to be more of a technical investigation than Deen’s play on association. There are so many components to Meyer-Brandis’ installation, ranging from a wall covered in documentation, to a vast network of tubes, monitors and projections. Even the practice behind the installation seems more scientific; Meyer-Brandis took part in an expedition with the German Aerospace Centre, which entailed going on a flight that reached 8500m outside the atmosphere. She used a machine, entitled Cloud Core Scanner, to examine the behavior of dust particles in a weightless environment. The resulting film documentation is less of a documentary than you would think; it shows the preparations for the flight, the actual experiments being conducted, combined with archival footage detailing the scientific explanation of cloud formation. Yet there is no hypothesis or conclusion. It is a scientific process without a clear purpose, end or beginning.
This is also reflected in the multiple facets of the actual installation; each corner of the Cloud Core Scanner machine has a little detail which begs for the viewer’s attention and interpretation. A counter on the wall gradually accumulates a larger and larger figure, until climactically it reaches the ‘cloud’ notification, at which point a haze puffs up in the large plastic sphere intrinsically connected to the impressive network of tubes and structures. And just as quick as it appeared, it vanishes without a trace with a perplexing velocity. A magic trick to stun the eye and taunt it with the following build-up to the next expulsion of a cloud.
Similarly, an object below the sphere hovers inexplicably as a metal rod demonstratively crosses beneath it to prove it is indeed hovering. This is also captured in a film which is displayed on a small monitor. The visual simplicity and absurdity of this image strongly reminded me of a David Lynch film, and it is these aesthetic elements of the work that, for me, make the work all the more significant. Conceptually, the work seems intimidatingly technical and scientific. But in the presentation of her creative processes, Meyer-Brandis has made conscious stylistic choices which elevate this from being a somewhat alienating and clinical display of information to a fascinating visual journey which is both intriguing for its technical prowess and its artistic ambiguity.
If you’re in town on the 20th of March, be sure to go to the guided tour of the exhibition at 19:00, where both artists will be present to discuss their work.
Here’s a conversation between Regine Debatty and Agnes Meyer-Brandis, which throws some more light on her practice. Edwin Deen was the winner of the Dutch ‘ArtOlive Jong Talent’ prize in 2009, and here’s an article about that year’s selection (in Dutch).
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