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Photos: Rocio Chacon

Natur Blick

Augustine Carr, Chantal Faust, Otto Ford, Gili Lavy, Clair Le Couteur, Samantha Lee, Alix Marie, Anna Skladmann, WARD, Andrea Zucchini

The Koppel Project, London

12 April 12 - 25 May 2018

Co-curated with Augustine Carr

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I think I scan, I think I scan, I think I scan.

And I touch, in order to see.

Scanning is a visual movement, a sweeping glance,

a skim, an analysis, and a conversion.

To scan is to look quickly, and also to look carefully.

In the digital realm, scanning demands proximity,

it is intimate in this way.

The seeing eye of the machine is a reader of surfaces,

recording traces of a perceptual and tactile encounter.

In the land of the flatbed, touch, vision,

and memory become inseparable.

In this sense, the seeing organ is more akin to a tongue than an eye,

a close-up form of perception and ingestion,

licking blindly in the dark.

Chantal Faust, 2018

This exhibition brought together the work of ten contemporary artists looking into the concept of ‘scanning.’ The works included varied from photography to installation, from video to performance and sculpture, as well as accompanying texts by Chantal Faust. The title, ‘Natur Blick,’ which roughly translates to ‘the nature of looking,’ is derived from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s quote: ‘thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.’ Anachronizing this fragment of Goethian text into the contemporary context, the exhibition explored various artistic interpretations of looking as a form of ‘scanning.’  It invited artists and publics to first consider scanning as a way to absorb what we see around us, to then dwell on the thoughts and perceptions that capture us, on the ideas and feelings that, inversely, scan us. Natur Blick therefore occurred in both the physical and experiential realms. This project addressed interwoven aspects around the human body and technology, natural and artificial environments, as well as perception, affect and knowledge exchange.

Alongside the exhibition, we presented two performances by Lunatraktors featuring Carli Jefferson & Clair Le Couteur.

Special thanks to Rebecca Marcus-Monks.

**Click here to read a review in This is Tomorrow: 'Natur Blick' by Olivia Aherne**