Beate Geissler/Oliver Sann: Knowledge Comes with Death’s Release

May 5 – June 10, 2018

Cindy Rucker Gallery is pleased to present Knowledge Comes with Death’s Release featuring works by artist-duo Beate Geissler and Oliver Sann. This is the artists’ second show at the gallery.

Despite their ubiquity and naïve promise of infinite companionship, technological products abandon us. The screens that deliver information and entertainment succumb to their fragility to reveal their mortal secrets previously hidden behind the black mirror. In these otherwise discarded objects, Geissler/Sann find reason to celebrate the patternless logic of these mechanical conflicts; the phosphors that once effortlessly composed the most intricate details are minimized to large swaths of ultramarine and vermillion.

Horseshoe crabs, perhaps our longest partners, also threaten to depart: while their origin dates back to four hundred and eighty-five million years ago and they have survived at least a dozen extinctions, their population is dwindling due to overfishing for food and bait, and the harvesting of their blue blood for scientific purposes. As these ancient creatures are impossible to raise to adulthood while in captivity, their mortality in the blood-letting process stems from the amount of blood drawn and the stress experienced during handling and transport.

In this exhibition aptly titled from David Bowie’s Nietzschean rock ballad Quicksand, Geissler/ Sann explore the beauty in the frail tension between scientific advancement, nature and those that inhabit both spaces simultaneously. Alongside the large panel sized prints lay two screens: one depicts a horseshoe crab’s slow traverse and the other etched with a centuries old geocentric map. Visual parallels between the circular map and the crab’s carapace underscore the parallels between the “center of the universe” attitude of humankind and the near casualty of the ancient creature alongside.

Altogether, the photographs and videos on display are the result of a post-apocalyptical landscape in which both objects and subjects have cracked. However, while their cracks manifest mechanical stress, it is difficult to determine whether to interpret their image as death, weakness, or perhaps strength, like leaves with their guiding lines for growth.