KATJA STRUNZ names the exhibition she curated “FIELD PHANTOM”: “The dictionary defines a feld as an outlined area of a bigger spatial link and describes a phantom as a form recreated for the purpose of inspection. The artists play with the boundaries of the malleable, the perceivable, the definable: They create a tension feld by countering the visible and invisible, the form and formless. In their work, space emerges as a Field Phantom. The artists' approaches to the theme differ: they shape space (Reconstructed Space, MARKUS SCHALLER), fill space sonically (Unsound System, NIK NOWAK) or limit space (Rifts of Absence, YEHUDIT SASPORTAS, Untitled, ROSS BLECKNER). By doing so, they sum up the entirety of possible conditions of spacial boundaries.”

From her own oeuvre KATJA STRUNZ picks four Pulp Paintings and one wall object (Hollow Face Illusion) for the exhibition. The Pulp Paintings' technique follows the ancient Asian tradition of paper manufacturing: the abaca fibre base is hand made, the multicoloured paper objects on top are fashioned from old cotton fabrics. The past the materials bear condenses space, time and history. The work Hollow Face Illusion shows a photograph of a historical statue's casting mould which has been reconstructed and cast for the rebuilding of Berlin's City Palace. The hollow counter form is perceived as a three-dimensional face due to the viewer's visual patterns.

In his works MARKUS SCHALLER has embossed Kepler's law of planetary motion with hundreds of tons of pressure force onto anodised aluminium. Due to the interplay of the external force and the material's resistance a curved field formed. Under the gallery's lighting the geometric texture reflects the viewer's movements. In the video installation Aktom graphite powder, the purest form of carbon, floats through the air and is filmed in HD video frames. The hexagonal crystal system is reflected by the light and becomes visible.

YEHUDIT SASPORTAS is currently one of the most infuential artists from Israel. She represented her country at the Venice Biennale in 2007. Landscapes of muddy forests, black lakes and withered tree trunks, painted in ink, oscillate between idyll and apocalypse, harmony and unrest, day and night.

NIK NOWAK works with mobile sound systems and the ambivalent role of music when used as a weapon and as a cultural catalyst. The artist developed the works Unsound System and Model for a Monument as a result of a cultural exchange with North Korea. They explore the topics of dictatorship, censorship and regimentation.

Ross Bleckner

Katja Strunz