KOCHI: Art lovers got a glimpse of the life and works of Swiss artist Christian Waldvogel as he unveiled his projects one by one to tell the audience how art, science, universe, space and time are interwoven with one another and united with the human race.
The artist was in Kochi to participate in the ‘Art Talk’ programme organised by Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF) at Fort Kochi on Monday. Waldvogel will be doing a solo project themed on astronomy for the upcoming Kochi Muziris Biennale. He said his art practice deals largely with humanity as a species on a planet. Most of his works tend to see both humanity and earth from a universal perspective. “In the case of art that deals with earth as a sphere orbiting a star, space is the ‘outside’ vantage point,” he said in his talk titled ‘Event Horizon’.
The relationship between space and time is another major theme of his works.
Space technologies, possibilities, restrictions and data are the major tools and materials with which the artist operates. Some of Waldvogel’s projects presented during the talk were ‘Seven Years From Here,’ an assembly of the first panorama of Saturn’s moon Titan using raw Huygens data; ‘Space from Space’, for which he took guidance from NASA moonwalkers and astronauts; and Galileo’s Missing Argument which depicted astronomical simulations which generate visual evidence for the truthfulness of Galileo’s claims. Waldvogel’s solo exhibitions include ‘Larger Earth’ in the Swiss Pavilion at the Biennale ‘Architettura Venezia (2004); ‘Erdkrmmung’ in the Museum of Fine Art Berne (2006) and ‘Chance Encounters of Happenstance and Negative Entropy’ at the Fondazione Morra Greco, Naples (2013).
Maharaja’s former principal to perform at GH
It was during her stint at Maharaja’s College, first as a professor and then as the principal, that Mary Matilda began organising music programmes and singing songs to bring tranquillity to a campus torn by political fighting between students.
Taking this experience as a back up, Matilda will now croon for the patients of Ernakulam General Hospital as part of the ‘Art and Medicine’ project organised by the Kochi Biennale Foundation on Wednesday.
She will perform for the patients with five of her former students - Prof I K Jayadev, HOD, Islamic History at Maharaja’s, Vinayachandran, Mini Venugopal, Nidhin and Mridula.
Matilda received training in classical music at a young age. She used to sing along with students at various programmes in the college. Wednesday’s musical treat will be 26th programme in the ‘Arts and Medicine’ series.