Art & Science

Art and science are often considered as ontologically opposed. Yet there are several intersections and overlaps that can show us how close the arts stand to science and research. First we must mention the materials and technical processes involved in the making of art. Even in a „simple“ medium like oil painting we cannot do without chemical and physical ingredients and techniques. It is for this reason that painters were part of the Pharmacists Guild in Renaissance Florence. Photography is an even more obvious example of how science shapes art.

The artists in this exhibition go even further. They experiment with chemicals, bacteria and employ all kinds of technical machinery normally used rather in a laboratory. They use IT and microscopes, build complicated devices or galvanise metal like an engineer. They are researching which aesthetic possibilities and ways of expression they can create with unusual – for art – technologies.

They are similar to scientists in curiosity and willingness to experiment. Behind it stands the question of what literally matters for the human being and what moves us. Perhaps even the quest for a transcendence of materiality, a prerogative of art, and thus the idea of overcoming one’s own ephemerality or at least to ennoble a given material, as is the case in alchemy where art and science were linked for several hundred years.