As Guest Artist in Drawing at Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Sian Bowen spent two years (2010-12) developing a new body of works; the Nova Zembla collection of prints, which, having lain frozen in the Arctic for three centuries, provided opportunities to explore the materiality of drawing and the ephemeral nature of museum objects on paper. The prints were carried as merchandise on a 1596 failed Dutch expedition to China. An over-wintering refuge on Nova Zembla housed these stacks until their discovery: they had been transformed into papier-mâché blocks. In 1977, methods were devised to reassemble the thousands of fragments.

The works in this exhibition reflect Bowen’s own ‘journey’ 
through the project, emphasizing the tactile qualities of her 
artworks which, at the same time, employ light, transparency, perforation, reflection and fragility, 
and consolidating the often fugitive nature of the materials used in 
their making.
 The artist realized the project collaborating with Rijksmuseum’s Paper 
Conservation Studio to employ 16th century methods and materials to new ends, and also with archaeologists, curators, historians, printmakers and filmmakers. She worked closely with papermaker, Gangolf Ulbricht, to make paper for her drawings sympathetic to that of the Nova Zembla prints. In addition she retraced part of the route of the original expedition and filmed this journey through the fragmented icepack as it was reflected in a replica ‘Claude glass’.

Sian Bowen and Nova Zembla: Suspending the Ephemeral, published by RGAP, accompanies the exhibition. Critical essays by Wim Pijbes, (Director of the Rijksmuseum), Jan de Hond, (Curator of the Nova Zembla Collection), Jan Philipp Fruehsorge, Chris Dorsett and Joel Fisher contextualize the new works which include drawings, vellum bound artist books and video pieces.

The project has been supported by Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and the Art and Humanities Research Council, UK.

When John Cage made this remark in 1970 in a conversation with Daniel Charles, the world was still divided into firm blocks with no sense of mobility, a matter of course in today’s media age. John Cage shows, that the coincidences which appear in his notations can be seen - together with the coincidences which occur during the display of his works – as art. That means that information based on coincidences together with substantiality becomes the reality of the piece of music. Cage articulates that something coincidental does not have to be arbitrary.

In the 21st century, the once inflexible categories came into motion. Art and science became closer. As a result, this years documenta 13 hired quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger as a consultant. Zeilinger is convinced that the role of coincidence is one of the most important discoveries of the applied sciences in the 20th century and also that the concepts of information and substantiality are interwoven and inseperable. Although the world as process has come to the fore, substantiality and reality are still taken for the same. But reality is the result of the interaction between coincidence with information and substantiality as a potentiality. To continue to make this idea clear, is the core discipline of art how Cage understands it.

The concept of the exhibition „im Orbital“ broaches the issue of coincidence in the tradition of John Cage and the design of substantiality of quantum theory. The shown drawings and animations are determined by coincidences.

Bettina Munks exhibition "im Orbital" at fruehsorge contemporary drawings is part of a event series by the Akademie der Künste Berlin:


www.adk.de/de/aktuell/veranstaltungen/index.htm?we_objectID=30736

www.adk.de/de/aktuell/veranstaltungen/index.htm?we_objectID=30748