Figures of Research

FIGURES OF RESEARCH

Inspired by a series of found scientific diagrams Nikolaus Gansterer compiled an elaborate collection of hand made drawings questioning the possibilities and limitation of visual information. The work „Figures of Research“ deals with the relationship between science and fiction by reflecting on methods of description and interpretation of measured realities.

The drawings come out of Gansterers investigation into the visual strategies used in the presentation of theoretical conjectures as arrangements of coherent facts and the way in which they lay a claim to re/present objective truth. In the course of a multi-stage process Nikolaus Gansterer de-contextualized the found figures by „cleaning“ them from their original descriptive captions and layers of text in order to release their speculative potential.

Thus undermining the ordering systems and schematics by depriving the diagrams of their orientation based on prediction and calculation, he exposes them as instruments of power. In the resulting drawings the abstract forms have become relational signs, communicating a free semantics where the factual again gives way to the fictional.

In a further step the seris of drawings „Figure of Research“ become the starting point for Gansterers longterm research project „Drawing a Hypothesis“, where the drawings were sent to various artist s, scientists and philosophers with the quest for a written hypothesis about their potential function. (Astrid Wege)

Year: ongoing since 2005
Technique: Ink drawings

Exhibited at:

– 2021: Figures de Pensées. Denkbewegungen: Nikolaus Gansterer, Centre d’art Contemporain, Les Tanneries Amilly/Paris, France

– 2014: My Brain is in my Inkstand, Cranbrook Museum, Detroit, US.

– 2013: When Thought beacome Matter and Matter turns into Thought,  Nikolaus Gansterer, Solo exhibition, Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna, Austria

– 2012/13: Schaubilder, Kunstverein Bielefeld, Germany

– 2012: Study on Knowledge, Forum Stadtpark, Graz, Austria

– 2009: Konturen, Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna, Austria

– 2007: Resonaces, Artis, Den Bosch, Netherlands

– 2007: Bioforms, Cheapart Gallery, Athen, Greece

– 2007: Artmart, Kuenstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria

– 2007: Fresh Trips, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

– 2007: Kunstambassade, Pictura Drawing Center, Dordrecht, Netherlands

– 2006: Potential Dialogue, RCM Museum, Nanjing, China

Published in:

– Drawing a Hypothesis, Nikolaus Gansterer (Ed.), Springer Verlag Wien/NewYork in the series: Edition Angewandte,  2011, ISBN 978-3-7091-0802-4

– Potential Dialogue, Zuo Jing, Christiane Krejs (Eds.), catalogue, RCM Museum, Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna/Nanjing, 2006