Catherine Christer Hennix: Cosmological Critique

The exhibition Cosmological Critique showcases the complex work of Catherine Christer Hennix (1948, Stockholm–2023, Istanbul), whose five decades of artistic activity involved the amalgamation of music, mathematics, language and spirituality into a singular space of thought. Hennix conceived her works as ‘semiotical objects’—such as signs, diagrams and texts, as well as sound and light compositions—through which she sought to investigate and to transform perception and the processes of meaning generation.

Beginning in the late 1960s, and with points of departure in the experimental music scenes of Stockholm and New York, Hennix developed an approach that shifted between minimalist composition, mathematical research and metaphysical speculation. Formative for her development were encounters with La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela and Pandit Pran Nath, whose ideas about time, sound and continuity had a lasting influence. In parallel, she was intensively preoccupied with the philosophical, logical and linguistic bases of mathematics, and was, among other things, a guest professor at the first lab for artificial intelligence at MIT.

Cosmological Critique is the most extensive presentation of this artist to date, and ranges from early graphic scores and immersive installations to abstract Nō dramas, paintings and sculptures, as well as questions of transfeminist aesthetics and politics. Recurring concepts drawn from mathematics and psychoanalysis function here less as references, and instead actually structure the works themselves. These are interpretable as manifestations of a radical conceptual and critical project that interweaves poetic, mathematical, musical and artistic forms of knowing to transcend Western categories of thought and medial boundaries in pursuit of cosmic perspectives.

Curated by Anja Casser, Lawrence Kumpf and Moritz Nebenführ

The exhibition is produced in collaboration with Malmö Konsthall, The Etymon Foundation (New York) and Empty Gallery (Hong Kong) as well as Marcus Pal as artistic advisor.