ETHERIAL MATTERS
Year: 2024
Curator: Anastasia Smirnov-Berlin
Location: Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna
Status: Curatorial concept
The word “ethereal” refers to the regions beyond the Earth: celestial and heavenly. At the same time, it also means something spiritual, intangible, immaterial, marked with unusual delicacy or refinement. Can we design clouds? Is it possible to build a maquette of the air between buildings? How to explore the microclimates around human bodies? What is one’s ideal, paradisiacal space? Is the “planetary garden” – a thin layer of breathable atmosphere – also the very Garden of Eden humans always dreamed about?
Etherial Matters is imagined as an exhibition in praise of the invisible (or hardly visible). To notice subtle mutations that may lead to tectonic shifts, one needs the power of imagination. That is why the significance of the climate change, for instance, remains largely unseen and therefore underestimated by many – until it is too late. We argue that today the etherial matters perhaps more than ever before. As the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, who followed the argumentation of the German thinker Johann Gottfried von Herder, stated: “we all should be the students of air”.
It is important to mention that this investigation is initiated in times of active warfare, when civilians in major cities are being bombed in massive air raids. This current moment makes the issue of safe h(e)avens not only an interesting curatorial challenge, but a true actuality for many around the world.
Ethereal Matters will aspire to merge content and format. While displaying a broad range of art works that deal with the problematique of air and sky, the exhibition itself will offer a mosaic of experiences, addressing all senses of the visitors through light installations, artificially created microclimates, and soundscapes. The exhibition will bring together artists, climate designers, scenographers, architects, and videographers from various generations – students and professors, established names as well as up-and-coming artists – to address the atmospheric ethics, which Sloterdijk so eloquently advocates for, and to experiment with atmospheric aesthetics that stems from it
Atmospheric and weather conditions, microclimates, sounds and the very movement of air will be reflected upon and presented here through multiple media. The exhibition itself is envisaged as a total (acclimatised) installation.
It will offer a comfortable cooling atmosphere allowing visitors to inhabit the space, to move in. Not only to view the exhibits but also experience them very directly with their bodies: to sit, lie down, climb up the stairs and “nest” on a higher ground. In an ideal situation the show should be organised in the hottest period of the year, unfolding a “scenography of cool” and welcoming longer visiting time.
The exhibition is strategically site specific. The space of the Kunsthalle is very wide and due to its characteristic proportions it comes across as a somewhat tight place with a low ceiling. The exhibition will aspire to create multiple architectural illusions, alternative “fake” perspectives, and unorthodox vantage points. In this room wide beams allow to activate the surface of the ceiling by means of trompe-l’œil openings: for instance, “video frescoes” will reinforce the effect of the space being open to sky. Some surfaces of the walls will also be occupied by “video murals” shot in accordance with the perspective of the room and thus achieving an effect of a much larger monumental space. Additionally, several pavilions – light structures covered with the textile flowing and dancing in well-staged breezes – will help to construct another artificial scape. An assortment of elevated platforms will bring visitors up in the air and offer unexpected views onto the interior of the room as well as outside of its windows.