A grin was on the face of the monster; he seemed to jeer, as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my wife.
— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
After killing the doctor’s wife, the monster of Frankenstein retreats behind a shutter and appears to laugh. As the monster develops a will, it transgresses the hierarchy between creator and created. The ethics of creating life has been heatedly debated since the advent of cloning, and Thomas Feuerstein’s use of living cells in his sculptures resurrects the question. His solo show Psychoprosa, at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, teems with fungi, algae and other slimy things. “The processual has been important for my work ever since my early digital works,” he claims. Far from the dry stuff of conceptual art, “process” is actually biological transformation on view. His art works thus seem no different than scientific experiments.
PSI+, 2015
Refrigerators, pneumatic system, glass flask, laboratory stirrer, surveillance camera, monitor, video (loop), computer, dimensions variable
software: Peter Chiochetti; pneumatic system: Stefan Göschl
© 2015 Thomas Feuerstein
The gesamtkunstwerk consists of a series of installations with prints, photography, painting, audiovisual material, and video; phantoms, zombies and germs shadow this transmedium show. On the top floor of the Kunstverein, a cooling chamber PSI+ consists of refrigerators of various sizes in an interactive machine. A monitor broadcasts live footage of the gallery visitors: doors and drawers open automatically, and only on the monitor is a ghostly figure visible, causing the uncanny happenings. The fridges are filled with jarred slime, generated by two glass apparatuses, Accademia dei Secreti. Glycoproteins from algal and fungal biomass mix with water to form a plastic-smelling slime that runs in and out of these sculpture-machines. The tubes continue through adjoining exhibition spaces and connect to Greenhouse, where the greenish molecule psilamin is synthesized.
Greenhouse. 2015
© 2015 Thomas Feuerstein
GATE, 2015
Glass, steel, plastic tubes, pumps, 390 x 200 x 140 cm
© 2015 Thomas Feuerstein
The entire exhibition uses the vocabulary of biochemistry, but it seems to have no experimental purpose—at least not in the traditionally scientific sense. In The tubes are further connected to other installations placed on the second and first floors, and eventually to the the mezannine level, to Kinoskulpture that broadcasts the sound of a. In the cinematic space, visitors see a dim lighted sculpture, while hearing a radio play–a sound collage of trash literature and scientific treatises to explain the biochemical processes used in Psychoprosa.
STERNENROTZ (KINOSKULPTUR) / ASTRAL JELLY (CINEMA SCULPTURE), 2015
Glass, phosphorescent slime, pump, radio play (100 min.), dimensions variable
Biochemical conception: Thomas Seppi, Voice: Tina Muliar, Composition: szely, Production: Peter Szely and Ö1 Kunstradio, Story: Thomas Feuerstein
Though Feuerstein claims the experiments can be seen as metaphors for social structures, it’s unclear how the aesthetic and the scientific relate. Does this work lose its scientific weight by only aesthetically mimicking scientific processes and experiments, without retaining its goals for creating experimental and replicable knowledge of the world? If Mary Shelley’s story prophesied that cloning would trouble the definition of human life, then Feuerstein’s work shows how biotechnology challenges the definition of art.
Thomas Feuerstein: PSYCHOPROSA is on view through August 30, 2015, at Frankfurter Kunstverein.
