Relations at Risk with Relations

19.01.2023 – 31.03.2023 Extended!
Max Planck Institute for Human Development

Closing Reception, Wednesday march 29, 5 – 8 pm.
Performance at 6pm

This final event of Relations at Risk with Relations will aim to put usual relations on their head, all in the name of some good fun.  
The science will be edible,
The art descriptions will be danced,

and small paintings will be made grand (prizes),

What connections to the paintings do you see in the Dance-Descriptions?  Write down your thoughts and enter a raffle for a chance to win unique art!

Location details: 
Max Planck Institute MPIB
Lentzeallee 94, 14195 Berlin
U3-Breitenbachplatz

Relations at Risk with Relations is on view 19.1. – 31.3.2023, Monday – Friday, 8 am – 7 pm at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Lentzeallee 94, 14195 Berlin

Special Event: February 24, 3 pm
a Walk with the Artist
It matters what attention creates experience, what experience creates attention. The human brain is constantly making choices about attention.  It might, for example, direct the eyes to look at the art, or to pay attention to the stairs in order not to trip on a step.  A camera, with each pixel the same, captures more of the white space.  On this special artist led tour, we will consider the art and our attention to it (or away from it).  There will be time to ask questions and to hear stories behind selected works.

"It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions...[anthropology] studies relations with relations, that puts relations at risk with other relations, from unexpected worlds"  - Donna Haraway in Staying with the Trouble Making Kin in the Chthulucene

Allowing ourselves to get lost in Kauppila's paintings, we observe color relations that allow other color relations.  This color fantasy is bordered by structures from science: the order of the genome, the aesthetics of mathematical distributions, and thoughts on the workings of the human visual system.  There is an attempt to negotiate the simultaneity of physical and intellectual space. 

Mathematics is the study of objects and their relations.  The word "relations" is how Kauppila decided to build a bridge between the artist and mathematician in herself, and between the art exhibition and the scientific research at MPIB.  

As one moves through the exhibition, paintings are experienced anew and in new combinations via the unique architecture.  The relations, between the artworks, the building and the art, and the people and the art, become the subject of the exhibition.

Opening Reception: January 19, 7 pm