"The Sky's The Limit: Fiona Banner, Daniela Brahm, Tobias & Raphael Danke, David Hatcher, Andrew McLeod, Peter Robinson, Yvonne Todd"
2003-09-20 until 2003-11-07
Kunstverein Langenhagen
Langenhagen, , DE Germany

The exhibition "The Sky's The Limit" explores the boundaries of comprehension. Knowledge is conveyed through epistemological models and their visual or linguistic formulation. The exhibition looks at space - in the sense of an abstract concept as much as physical quantity - as a case study, since scientific discovery, technological innovation and philosophical deconstruction have resulted in a thorough revision of conventional ideas of space. The artworks brought together in the exhibition visualize these observations via various metaphors - from Plato's Cave to black holes.

Yvonne Todd's photograph "Quaalude Eyes" offers an acute image of communication and research - a telescope listening into outer space waiting for a signal to decode. Peter Robinson's body of work "Divine Comedy", presented at the New Zealand Pavilion at the Venice Biennial 2001, investigates the concept of nothingness. His sculpture "Inflation Theory" is based on Stephen Hawking's model of a multi-shaped, complex universe - a theory that breaks with all conventional concepts and touches the limits of scientific verification.

Against outer space, Andrew McLeod's digital prints overlay architectural structures with telescopic images of faraway galaxies, conflating microcosm and macrocosm. His recent print "Cave Complex II" references philosophical considerations raised by Plato and links into the work of Raphael & Tobias Danke: the artist duo has developed a body of work that consists of sculptures, installations, drawings and books that circle the implications of Plato's Cave. The artists employ Plato's allegory as a starting point for questioning exhibition spaces as spaces for perception, understanding and learning. For "The Sky's The Limit" Tobias & Raphael Danke have produced a new cave sculpture.

Spaces that exist through and beyond geographical, national or physical boundaries populate David Hatcher's work as it observes art history, politics, philosophy and economics as entities that generate their own languages, semiotic systems and discursive spaces. For the exhibition "The Sky's The Limit" Hatcher has developed a wall work, "Dimensions Variable (Albert Hofmann)". This work cites Hofmann's diary, in which he refers to his first scientific experiments synthesising the drug LSD. Playing with visual & psychological perceptual registers and installed on the main wall of the Kunstverein, it leads to the work of Turner-Prize nominee Fiona Banner who explores the limits of language and communication. Her sculpture and drawing series "Full Stops" - blown-up punctuation marks - provide linguistic rhythm and transform the exhibition space into a clausal environment that provides a syntax for the exhibited art works. The over-sized dots made out of black graphite turn into gravitational centres, into black holes.

Daniela Brahm's triptych "Re-Entry Capsule" draws on a design by Wernher von Braun for a space rescue vehicle. The capsules transport three famous women from a period of over 70 years into our time. Brahm references time machines and introduces a feminist discourse into the exhibition which is echoed by the erotic print "Cave Complex II" by Andrew McLeod and Peter Robinson's ironic drawing "Sarenna Lee's Inflation Theory" - a tongue-in-cheek combination of sex and science.

With these artworks and their examination of the reliability of perception and static knowledge, the exhibition in turn reflects on its own role as a model for investigating the limits inherent to epistemics.

Peter Robinson
Inflation Theory I, 2001
Fiberglas, Acrylfarbe ca.
150 x 165 x 200 cm
Installationsansicht Neuseeländischer Pavillion,
Biennale von Venedig 2001

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