Monika Baer/Thomas Bayrle

Any attempt to critically deal with this exhibition’s surprising juxtaposition of works by Monika Baer and Thomas Bayrle must first take into account the clear differences between their aesthetic positions: Since the early ’90s, Baer has been developing a thoroughly heterogeneous artistic practice in paintings, drawings, and collages that combines atmospherically evocative techniques of abstraction with figurative elements that have an almost surrealistic effect; the idiosyncratic results are characterized by a linking of the clear-cut with the amorphous and of the visceral with the conceptual,

Last Year. 2007, mixed media, dimensions variable.

picks May 09, 2007

Angela Bulloch

Upon entering this exhibition, one’s attention is immediately captured by a large, luminous balloon hovering in the darkened gallery. A slightly off-kilter image of the Southern Hemisphere, taken from outer space, is projected onto it. When the projection temporarily expires, a yellowish light arises from the back of the hanging sphere. Loudspeakers diffuse a considerably slowed and altered 1973 jazz version of Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. As always in Bulloch’s installations, sound, light, and image are meticulously intertwined; here the sound track (coordinated with the programming