FROZEN LIGHT
Until 15 April 2023.
The cold, the light, the colors: three artists have created works that could not be more different, but all deal with the visual and climatic cha-racteristics that shape the essence of the Engadine.
For the glass sculptures from his latest series „Gravity Flow“, Swiss artist DOUGLAS MANDRY has scanned glacier mills. He uses the negative space of the natural cavities formed by water as a starting point and creates 3D frag-ments that are cast and mouth-blown into sculptures using a technique that is thousands of years old. Turned positi-ve, these fragments of empty spaces become objects that remind us of the fragility of our ecosystem.
Parallel to the presentation in the Forum Paracelsus, an outdoor installation can be visited on Muottas Muragl. The installation deals with climate change and its visible effects on the Swiss glaciers. The shapes are based on cavities under the surface of glaciers. These so-called glacial mills are created by meltwater and are constantly growing and changing, accelerated also under the influence of climate change. In collaboration with researchers from the ETH, the mills were measured with 3D scanners and digital models were designed. Art and science cooperate to find ans-wers to climate change and to present them visually.
A view from outside: JEFFREY CONLEY (US) – one of the most renowned landscape photographers in the USA – was invited to travel the Engadine and discover it for his abstract landscape studies. As focused and contemplative as Conley photographs, his images also have a meditative radiance. He plays with perspectives, scale and lighting moods, creating natural images of unique simplicity and stillness. In addition, Conley is a master of print techniques: silver gelatine, platinum or pigment prints on bamboo paper – all prints are handcrafted by the artist with the grea-test care and profound knowledge.
SIMONE KAPPELER’S (CH) analogue photographic experiments with Polaroid and infrared films show a familiar landscape in a surprising light. There is something fluid about Kappeler’s photographs. It is as if we were witnessing the process of creating the image, that magical process that has disappeared with digital photography. As if we were in the darkroom watching a landscape slowly appear on paper. This character of emerging from the depths of the image surface characterizes Simone Kappeler’s photography.
