Project Description

2019

Solo show

Cornelia Erdmann explores relations of how and why we associate light always with vision. Light creates visibility in our everyday by natural and artificial light. Light fills and forms our surrounding. But yet its paradox is that light itself is invisible. What we see are its reflections.

This exhibition showcases a series of all new works she has developed during her artist residence.

About the Exhibition

The point of departure for creating works during the residence is an empty studio space with plain walls, no material and tools at hand. From observation of my surrounding I was inspired by the architecture and spatial disposition that seems to be often based on squares and cubes. I started to create drawings of cubes stacked into spatial arrangements that reference architectural topographies. These three-dimensional forms are re-interpreted in two-dimensional representations, abstracted expressions. Yet, applied back onto architecture they materialise a subtle change in surface, a texture that reflects light into its surrounding. The tape lines are not entirely abstract though, as they are tangible to the touch, thus dissolving the two-dimensional surface into a three-dimensional illusion.

From cubes to circles, from dissolving spatial boundaries to shaping with texture, light and colour. The next installation is about seeing and about nuanced perception. Using old-school overhead projectors as light sources allow at the same time to play with colours, scale and details. The circular projections tint the room in various colours that change the atmosphere of the space completely. The circles encourage to look closer and are at the same time like lenses that either zoom in or out into something that we can interpret as microscopic organisms or as fuzzy landscapes: “You See What You Want to See”. A series of those projections made at the studio reiterate in a different form as photographic prints that capture the otherwise ephemeral installation.

Other circular shapes of light are traced by laser pointers that are made into a robotic wooden sculpture. This “Drawing Machine for a Brighter Future” is made in homage to the current situation in Hong Kong.

The material wood appears in several works. In “Your Rumination” wood and neon tubes are made into lamps that play with coloured reflections and your reflections on what the narratives of the otherwise abstract light colour arrangements can evoke in you.

In my works I like to use material that I find in my everyday. I have a soft spot for analogue and so called ‘old-school’ technology. Light cannot be separated from colour. Especially when it comes to using coloured light, with nowadays advanced RGB-LED technology, it is easy to create ambiently lit spaces. But in this show I tried to play with light and colour where light itself is not just a medium but a material that is visible to us in objects, on surfaces and in the space, that invites to reflections.

The exhibition Light: Reflections on Material, Surfaces and Space is part of the City of Zurich-Artist in Residence programme initiated by the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (MA in Transdisciplinary Studies) and the Stadt Zürich Kultur.

15-21 December 2019, 10am-6pm
Zürcher Hochschule der Künste
Kunstraun, Toni-Areal, Pfingstweidstrasse 96, Zürich (CH)
Kunstraum 5.K12

Documentation Catalogue