Susi Gelb" s soloshow at The Lighthouse Zürich.
Susi Gelb: LOOPZRING
7 October - 5 November, 2022
The Lighthouse Zürich, Zürich
The monumental video work “Whirled_Z” is shown on two large screens in the center of the exhibition space. It shows an exhilarating zoom shot through opulent cloudscapes, masses of water, smoke, fire, fantastic structures. Is it researching the origin of the world, the Big Bang, or is it looking into an unclear future? The oscillating pull of our endless universe, l'appel du vide? The video work was realized in cooperation with artificial intelligence: the visually stunning pull was created with a text-to-image process, in which the artist instructs the AI with a written storyboard to create moving images. It has only recently become possible that AI can create such virtuoso animations from text input. This opens up completely new possibilities for artistic production. The cooperation between the artist and AI is characterized by serendipity, the result of the intensive dialogical cooperation was never completely foreseeable or controllable and is therefore tantamount to an oracle.
Opposite the captivating video work is a sculpture consisting of a rusted diamond drill bit and a glass jar containing orange liquid. The orange liquid is turned into a perpetually sucking vortex by a magnetic stirrer.
On the wall are five small-format works made of fluorescent plexiglass. The lasered motifs of spiral fossils and Aztec snake sculptures seem to glow almost magically.
In the corner, almost casually, is a fairly large drill core. It seems to come from different loamy layers of earth. However, the drill core is not real, but a photorealistic print on textile, it can be used as a pillow.
What binds the natural and the artificial worlds is a thin interwoven string of artistic exploration found in Susi Gelb’s exhibition LOOPZRING. Equipped with a fascination for scientific boundaries and discoveries, Susi enters a visual dialogue with the likes of Fibonacci and Mandelbrot, and just like a deep train of thought, she pulls us into her artistic cosmos. Susi Gelb's works transcend the intuitive horizon and explore technological boundaries. The films, sculptures and objects arehybrids of high-tech materials, archaic techniques and natural entities. Susi Gelb's art is also enigmatic, nothing is completely tangible or controllable.
Susi Gelb (*1985 in Bad Tölz, Germany) lives in Berlin. Recent exhibitions include Kritamon Oracle (Samos, GR), Gegenüberstellungen at Museum Schloss Moyland (Bedburg-Hau), Various Others at Nir Altman (Munich) and Unworlding (Frieze London). In 2015, Susi Gelb founded the nomadic artist-run space easy!upstream in Munich and has curated several exhibitions.
