BERND OPPL

Is Liquid Crystal, a work on a display, the work of the display, or—quite trivially—a broken display? And if it’s the latter, can I be sure that the liquid cloud haunting the dry concrete of the room in Water is my eye is not actually a projection error of the projector? Or am I, as the title suggests, looking at the inside of my eye, which is a tidy chamber that, on the one hand, processes light in motion and, on the other hand, must be constantly protected from drying out by organic fluids? Encountering these works through seeing and hearing always means entering these moving loops with thought and feeling, which describe something without ever fully fixing it. Phantom Power consists of three magnetic soundtracks, on which the artist has composed sound structures from dozens of noises emitted by optical apparatuses. The machines of seeing become sound producers, the sounds they generate in turn trigger three neon lamps whose colours together form the RGB spectrum. The instrument of seeing becomes sound, which in turn brings forth the visible; sensory channels mutate, disappear, and reappear, emphasising the interminability of this realisation in this looped movement.

The precise forms, the exhibited materialities, the delicate accuracy of the works suggest control, inviting one to linger in a sense of security, only to, once you engage with it, evoke aesthetic formations where one’s own position and understanding of reality instantly become porous. g__et in deals with this moment of ambiguity that will never end: Again and again, I move through a square tunnel that traverses the concrete block in front of me, a tunnel that unsettles dimensions between viewer, object, and gallery space, actually present yet thoroughly virtual (recorded, mirrored, simulated).

Text by Alejandro Bachmann (author, Prof. at Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Germany). Courtesy Galerie Krinzinger.