Madeleine Boschan
25 May - 29 Jun 2013
MADELEINE BOSCHAN
Anwesenheit unerreichbarer Bezugspunkte
25 May - 29 June 2013
There is more than a difference of degree between
being short – short of the world, short of self –, and
being without these esteemed commodities.
The one is a predicament, the other not ...
Samuel Beckett
Galerie Bernd Kugler is outstandingly happy to present the second solo exhibition of Madeleine Boschan in Innsbruck.
In the last years, Madeleine Boschan has extensively occupied herself with the television work and the late »closed space stories« of Samuel Beckett from which almost a whole poetics of space can be deduced: space ›itself‹ is empty and incomprehensible. Only when a body appears designating its particular place, the void assumes contour, form, shape, and can be experienced as surrounding space in the strict sense. It is for the bodies present to formulate space, or for the bodies absent to let the void reappear.
Therefore, experience of space is quite fundamentally a physical experience; a fact profoundly integrated in Boschan’s own sculptural questions: how does a body gain halt and stand within the void, how does it establish its appropriate place and hold it up, how does it connect itself with other bodies and places?
She combines these questions with Jacques Lacan’s »objet petit a«. According to Lacan, the human being is always incomplete, a deficient being, and the object petite a, whatever it may be, constitutes the drive of all human actions to overcome this defect, to close the subject-cleavage. However, as an imaginary object it always remains unattainable, it eludes continually, it ›lacks‹. The tension between permanent loss and the desire for wholeness is not to be repealed.
Hence, Madeleine Boschan transfers this ambivalent ›presence of unavailable terms‹ and references onto her most recent ensemble of ceiling and floor pieces, specifically conceived for Innsbruck:
Two sculptures (Rager) break through the ceiling and stretch far into the exhibition space. These delicate structures in stealth-gray defy gravity in a kind of graphic »upward stagger« (Gilles Deleuze). Like probes they seekingly traverse the space. They are equipped with all kinds of technical apparatuses – optical and cartographic devices, a compass and a plummet, pieces of fanned blinds – as if they were continuously collecting real-space data. In addition, both Rager exhibit in their cores a white porcelain baton in the form of a neon light capped with a plug.
Opposed to them, five white sculptures (Steler) are asymmetrically distributed on the floor. These narrow mounts straighten up robustly also carrying white batons atop. But unlike their china counterparts they are actual, electrified neon lights capable of illuminating.
The light batons represent the living, current flow of energy and – for the life span of the bulbs – are, consequently, measure instruments for the time given and its passing. In contrast, the porcelain batons of the Rager are beyond such references to time and the present. In them, the transient flow of energy has turned into an supratemporal presence paradoxically detached from life.
As opposing poles Rager and Steler each possess what the other lacks. However, as complementary conceptions of being both sides are intrinsically tied to each other and interrelated: the dormant, cooled down form no longer subjected to time’s passing and the pulsating, finite energy flow emitting light signals.
Thus in the exhibition space, the beholders find themselves amidst this intertwined constellation, precisely at the intersection of this interminable circulation, being gripped by searching and apparent finding, by having and not-having, by desire and loss.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with an essay by Norbert Haas, editor of the writings of Jacques Lacan, addressing the »objet petit a« and its role in the work of Madeleine Boschan.
Madeleine Boschan, born 1979, lives and works in Berlin. After having participated in numerous group exhibitions throughout Europe and North America, Kunstverein Ulm will present her first institutional solo exhibition in autumn 2013 (September 8 – November 3).
Anwesenheit unerreichbarer Bezugspunkte
25 May - 29 June 2013
There is more than a difference of degree between
being short – short of the world, short of self –, and
being without these esteemed commodities.
The one is a predicament, the other not ...
Samuel Beckett
Galerie Bernd Kugler is outstandingly happy to present the second solo exhibition of Madeleine Boschan in Innsbruck.
In the last years, Madeleine Boschan has extensively occupied herself with the television work and the late »closed space stories« of Samuel Beckett from which almost a whole poetics of space can be deduced: space ›itself‹ is empty and incomprehensible. Only when a body appears designating its particular place, the void assumes contour, form, shape, and can be experienced as surrounding space in the strict sense. It is for the bodies present to formulate space, or for the bodies absent to let the void reappear.
Therefore, experience of space is quite fundamentally a physical experience; a fact profoundly integrated in Boschan’s own sculptural questions: how does a body gain halt and stand within the void, how does it establish its appropriate place and hold it up, how does it connect itself with other bodies and places?
She combines these questions with Jacques Lacan’s »objet petit a«. According to Lacan, the human being is always incomplete, a deficient being, and the object petite a, whatever it may be, constitutes the drive of all human actions to overcome this defect, to close the subject-cleavage. However, as an imaginary object it always remains unattainable, it eludes continually, it ›lacks‹. The tension between permanent loss and the desire for wholeness is not to be repealed.
Hence, Madeleine Boschan transfers this ambivalent ›presence of unavailable terms‹ and references onto her most recent ensemble of ceiling and floor pieces, specifically conceived for Innsbruck:
Two sculptures (Rager) break through the ceiling and stretch far into the exhibition space. These delicate structures in stealth-gray defy gravity in a kind of graphic »upward stagger« (Gilles Deleuze). Like probes they seekingly traverse the space. They are equipped with all kinds of technical apparatuses – optical and cartographic devices, a compass and a plummet, pieces of fanned blinds – as if they were continuously collecting real-space data. In addition, both Rager exhibit in their cores a white porcelain baton in the form of a neon light capped with a plug.
Opposed to them, five white sculptures (Steler) are asymmetrically distributed on the floor. These narrow mounts straighten up robustly also carrying white batons atop. But unlike their china counterparts they are actual, electrified neon lights capable of illuminating.
The light batons represent the living, current flow of energy and – for the life span of the bulbs – are, consequently, measure instruments for the time given and its passing. In contrast, the porcelain batons of the Rager are beyond such references to time and the present. In them, the transient flow of energy has turned into an supratemporal presence paradoxically detached from life.
As opposing poles Rager and Steler each possess what the other lacks. However, as complementary conceptions of being both sides are intrinsically tied to each other and interrelated: the dormant, cooled down form no longer subjected to time’s passing and the pulsating, finite energy flow emitting light signals.
Thus in the exhibition space, the beholders find themselves amidst this intertwined constellation, precisely at the intersection of this interminable circulation, being gripped by searching and apparent finding, by having and not-having, by desire and loss.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with an essay by Norbert Haas, editor of the writings of Jacques Lacan, addressing the »objet petit a« and its role in the work of Madeleine Boschan.
Madeleine Boschan, born 1979, lives and works in Berlin. After having participated in numerous group exhibitions throughout Europe and North America, Kunstverein Ulm will present her first institutional solo exhibition in autumn 2013 (September 8 – November 3).