Lutz Bacher
Into the Dimensional Corridor
6 November 2014 – 6 April 2015
x-rummet, SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
Soelvgade 48-50
1307 Copenhagen K
Denmark
The new solo show by Lutz Bacher Into the Dimensional Corridor has been commissioned for x-rummet at SMK and consists of a sculptural configuration that comprises coloured acrylic glass sheets, life-sized cardboard cut-outs of characters from Star Trek, luminously blue video projections, and framed photographs of famous mathematicians.
From the mid-1970s onwards Lutz Bacher has explored how our lives and social identities are mediated through a wide array of configurations seen in e.g. popular culture. She deconstructs the usual appearances and expressions of collective materials by lifting them out of their original context, either isolating them or letting them form part of new contexts.
The exhibition title Into the Dimensional Corridor is in fact a found text taken from an episode from of the first season of the original Star Trek series. It seems to be referring to the transitory passage from one state to another, or from this world to another; a familiar rite within science fiction-culture and in spiritual thinking alike.
The framed diptychs in the series “Masters of Abstraction” come from a book bearing the same title; a book which contains portraits of mathematicians and scientists that have contributed to the development of cyber space. In many of her works Lutz Bacher has been interested in the relationship between found texts and images. This large book combines portraits of these figures with brief texts about their scientific achievements. In this sense the texts and pictures act as couplings that link up two language systems or systems of representation: the written and the visual.
The installation also incorporates four Star Trek cut-outs. Premiering in 1966, Star Trek has created a universe of outsiders and an alternative world order that may be regarded as a critical comment on a succession of conflicts pertaining to race, gender, war etc. More than anything, however, the series is first and foremost a truly long-lived pop-culture phenomenon, one that has, for decades now, reflected and fed the desire for the unknown and the fantastical. The many sheets of acrylic glass with their scratches and broken corners show signs of use and wear. Together with the luminously blue, monochromatic projections emitted by four video projectors they create a transparent membrane that simultaneously manifests itself as matter and has a dreamlike distancing effect. Like the title of the book on mathematicians, this part of the installation may be understood as an ambiguous reference to modern abstract art in which non-figurative or especially monochrome painting—mainly by male artists—has long held pride of place.
Overall, Lutz Bacher evinces an interest in the exchange of meaning that takes place when various different representations enter into new relationships with each other. Such exchanges prompt conventional readings to collapse and pave the way for other psychological, social, and narrative implications.
Lutz Bacher has lived and worked in California since the 1970s, but recently relocated to New York City. In 2013 she mounted three interconnected institutional solo exhibitions: at Portikus in Frankfurt-am-Main, at the ICA, London, and at the Kunsthalle Zurich. Previous institutional solo exhibitions include Aspen Art Museum (2014), MoMA PS1 (2009), Kunstverein Munich (2009), and the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (2008). Recent group exhibitions include Spies in the House of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2012); The Whitney Biennial, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2012); Closed Circuit, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2008); Grey Flags, Sculpture Center, New York and Bordeaux Musee d’Art Contemporain, Bordeux (2006); American Tableaux, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2002).
