Tracing the Ethereal

Sternenrotz , 2023, cotton thread, silk, silkpaint, iron bacteria pigment and ink

The exhibition ‘Tracing the Ethereal’ adopts the historical notion of the ether and the accompanying concept of the ethereal as starting metaphors and keys of reading to interpret and intertwine selected artworks by the emerging artists Veronika Beringer, Emma Kling, Lorenz Kunath, and Matthias Richard Ramsey. 

Until the early 20th century, light was presumed to propagate in the form of waves through the so-called ‘luminiferous ether‘. Stemming from the ancient Greek concept meaning ‘the blue sky above the clouds‘, this was hypothesized to be an invisible and infinite medium permeating the atmosphere and functioning as carrier and site for light to travel through space. Although for a long time postulated, the existence of the ether was never proven and ultimately discredited. In physics, the concept of the ether has thus served as a proxy for an undefinable, indeterminate, and intangible entity. 

Concurrently in the visual arts, avant-garde movements like Cubism, Futurism, and Surrealism were fervently stimulated by the field of ‘ether physics’ in their disruptive artistic explorations beyond the realm of the bodily and visible, towards the ‘fourth dimension’ and the abstracted. Arising from this historical terminology, the adjective ‘ethereal’ permeates our contemporary lives and invokes a multiplicity of connotations, referring not only to something undefinable, indeterminate, or intangible, but also to something ‘of the sky’, evanescent, and even spiritual. It discloses itself as a multifaceted and kaleidoscopic mental image through which to pursue both semiotic and semantic desires, destined to remain unfulfilled. 

The metaphor of the ether weaves a common thread through the reflections and expressions of these artists along both material-mediatic and conceptual-thematic coordinates. Indeed, on a mediatic interpretative level the concept of the ether metaphorically stands for a medium, a carrier, a site, whose historical existence, accepted definition, and established canonicity is to be critically confronted, reflected upon, and questioned. The artists featured in the exhibition transcend, prolongate, manipulate, and dematerialize the medium of painting both within and beyond the material borders of the canvas, following personal intuitions, playful drives, and the perceived zeitgeist of their environments. 

Sternenrotz (Detail) , 2023, cotton thread, silk, silkpaint, iron bacteria pigment and ink

On a conceptual-thematic interpretative level, the works reveal themselves to be in constant pursuit of never wholly definable and tangible subjects, visually explored by the artists through shapes of clouds and atmospheric effects, visions of sky with its lights and darkness, stars and their narrated secreted substances, and metamorphic transformations between mythological and natural elements. The cardinal point of the shown artistic practices lies neither in a realistic conjuring of these natural elements and effects in themselves, nor in an effort to forsake them in favor of all-embracing abstract aesthetics. Rather, they convey ‘tracings’ of the perpetual pursuance of formal painterly redefinitions and semantically open meanings by virtue of manifold and dialectical narrations, interpretations, and evocations of the natural realm, to, in David Joselit’s words, ‘reach outside of itself – to situate itself beside itself‘.

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The textile work „Sternenrotz“ refers to the phenomenon of the so-called „astral jelly” — gelatinous lumps that are often found in meadows, bogs, or clinging to tree branches. According to folklore, these deposits are believed to be the excrements of stars. The white to transparent slime balls remain a mystery to this day, with researchers typically attributing them to regurgitated frogspawn, bacteria, or fungi. For this work, she used silk paint as well as a pigment she created from iron bacteria found in marshy ponds in Iceland. Studies suggest that the earliest cave paintings were made using pigments derived from such iron oxide bacteria.

Text by Rosa Sancarlo