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until 07.07. | #2043ARTatBerlin | Galerie EIGEN + ART Berlin presents from 31st May 2018 the exhibition “formula” by the artist Carsten Nicolai.
The current exhibition presents paintings from an ongoing series titled formula, which will be presented for the first time in the rooms of the gallery EIGEN + ART Berlin. These paintings are studies that belong to a larger ensemble of works on the translation of mathematical formulas into graphs. Manipulated by the artist, various mathematical formulas are transferred to Gesso primed canvases and serve as tools for the drawing process. Carsten Nicolai refers back to the classical concept of painting, as the process of making this work is very much reminiscent of it; and at the same time alienated, since the operation with random generators and formulas contradicts this.
“Construction as ciphered information” could be named the method of this series. A transition from control and chance to perfect order, generated by mathematical formulas: the formula, a design element. The artist refers directly to the work of the composer Iannis Xenakis, whose music is explained by models of modern mathematics and physics, and creates a zone in which the exploration and application of mathematics, physics, statistics, game theory and randomized (random) processes play an autonomous role in the arrangement in the creation of these imagery. Forms and structures are everywhere, according to Xenakis, in biology, paleontology, astrophysics and nuclear physics. They provide excellent models, not to be imitated. But to stimulate and cause a shock.
Carsten Nicolais bifoliate are reminiscent of forms of animate and inanimate nature, of symmetry structures from botany (leaves, flowers, buds). Other patterns, in turn, draw sine or wave shapes on the surface of the paintings. The works gauss, bessel, fourier or lissajous are derived from the formulas of mathematicians and astrophysicists Carl Friedrich Gauss, Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, Joseph Fourier and Jules Antoine Lissajous. The viewer is literally drawn into the “paths” of the individual graphs. The series does not deny a certain musicality, since the patterns are equally transferable (ie transposable) to an auditory level. The individual shapes and patterns “play” the gallery space in a kind of “score” (notation) of frozen sound.
Carsten Nicolai continues his oeuvre with formula, inspired by the examination of scientific reference systems and mathematical patterns. Without negating in any way the primarily sensuous and poetic in his (total) work.
Vernissage: Thursday, 31st May 2018, 5:00 – 9:00 pm
Exhibition period: Thursday, 31st May to Saturday, 7th July 2018
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Image caption: Courtesy of EIGEN + ART Berlin – Carsten Nicolai – formula (Flyer – Auschnitt)
Exhibition Carsten Nicolai – formula – Galerie EIGEN + ART – Zeitgenössische Kunst – Exhibitions Berlin – Galleries Berlin | ART at Berlin
