Poetry of transformation
The Swiss artist Christian Gonzenbach works as a researcher at the interface between natural sciences and artistic approaches. For the Dominican Church the artist designed a temporary installation.Poetry of transformation
Interview with Christian Gonzenbach
The Swiss artist Christian Gonzenbach works as a researcher at the interface between natural sciences and artistic approaches. For the Dominican Church the artist designed a temporary installation. The exhibition not only shows objects cast from black artificial wax, but also reveals their production process.
Andreas Hoffer, curator of the exhibition, spoke to the artist about his approach to the work in Krems.
What were your thoughts when you first entered the Dominikanerkirche? Did you already know what you were going to do here?
When I entered the Dominican Church in Krems, I was struck by the vastness of the empty space. Why was such a gigantic building constructed? As the church is emptied of all furniture, the space appears even more expanded. This was the starting point of my reflection. On one side, there is the dizzying verticality of the stone construction, the result of human effort over decades, and on the other side, the spiritual role of the building. Why such effort for something as immaterial as the salvation of the soul?
Since I cannot concern myself with the salvation of the soul, I focused on the material aspect, on a human level. Our civilization is industrious; we spend our time producing, observing, touching, acquiring, and destroying objects. This cycle of material life is what I want to physically install in the church.
Is the act of creating within your art also an allusion to the myth of creation, as it is presented (and also made) in a former church?
The original act of creation remains a mystery. Where do we come from? Where does life come from? The universe, matter?
The theological answers dominated for centuries and were then questioned by Enlightenment thinkers. It seems that science has replaced religion. Yet even though the biological theories of evolution explain how life developed on Earth, they do not answer why life appeared. Why is there something instead of nothing? The mystery persists and fascinates. My project does not aim to answer this either. What I question, is the incessant human activity of producing and reproducing things and consuming them. Is this a way of reenacting the act of creation? For me, it is about setting up a production workshop. Things are made, not out of nothing, but rather forms are created from raw material; there is a process of organization, of shaping, hence creating meaning.
The entire installation takes place on tables, and in a religious context, tables have a particular significance. The table of the Last Supper, where a meal is shared, but also the sacrificial altar where offerings are placed. The tables, like all other elements of the project, have multiple levels of interpretation.
What significance does transience, which is given in the process of making a work, have for the work itself?
The title of the exhibition, "On Human Level," suggests that we are on a material level, not a divine one. The installation spreads out horizontally in opposition to the verticality of the building, a symbol of spiritual elevation. No matter what we do, we remain subject to gravity, anchored to the earth. The material nature of human existence can seem unbearable, and knowing our life is limited in time, "subject to decay," has been a primary subject of meditation for millennia, a topic of philosophical or theological reflection.
My project simply shows how things take shape and how they lose their shape. Form, like life, is transient. The biblical man is molded from clay and returns to the earth as dust. But what is exciting is what happens in between! The energy of fabrication generated by the installation, the emergence of objects from their molds, their presentation as offerings or ex-votos on long tables. The moment when the objects melt, become formless. They mix and become raw material, chaos, and thus ready to start again. The temporary nature is accentuated using black wax, an ephemeral material par excellence. Derived from fossil matter (oil), wax is not meant to preserve a form but allows the transition from one figure to another.
The poetry of transformation is, of course, at the heart of the project, with a reflection on the transitory nature of existence, its futility, and its beauty.