Ephemeral islands, petrified raindrops, a collection of body stones, a shared birthday with a volcano.
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Steine, curated by Sara Barnes and Andrew Patrizio
Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité, 2012
Ephemeral islands, petrified raindrops, a collection of body stones, a shared birthday with a volcano. Certain geological processes evoke a more personal response to the idea of geological time. What is the duration of daily life, the life span of a volcano, your own time floating around on tectonic plates? What does 300,000,000 years actually mean? If a body stone is a miniature landmass, how do we locate it on the map? If a new landmass can be born, should we mark its birth and death? As astronauts frequently form body stones in space, are they discovering internal planets en-route? How do we understand the deep geology of Earth or the Solar System or, indeed, the historical record of museum objects? We are all autobiographical trace fossils, a record of an action no matter whether animal, vegetable, mineral or somewhere in between.
Created by Glasgow-based artist Ilana Halperin and inspired by the collections at the Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum, the exhibition Steine is a unique contribution to an enigmatic topic: a creative exploration of the intersections between body stones and geology. Steine juxtaposes the artist’s work with medical and geological materials, forming a series of poetic connections between the organic and inorganic, across time and space.
Hand Held Lava, curated by Sara Barnes and Andrew Patrizio
Schering Stiftung Project Space, Berlin, 2012
Volcanic activity is never far from our minds or the world news. With her new solo exhibition Hand Held Lava at the Ernst Schering Foundation’s Project Space opening on 2nd February 2012, the Glasgow-based artist llana Halperin (b.1973, New York) looks deep into volcanic phenomena and the interplay of life cycles between humans and volcanoes.
Hand Held Lava will focus upon the artist’s long-standing engagement with volcanoes, their generation and life stories. Drawing on personal experience, Ilana Halperin makes biographical connections to volcanic phenomena and examines parallels between geological and human life cycles. The ejection of stony material, the generation of new landmass, the contrast of slow time and fast time: Halperin employs geology as a language to conceive our understanding of time and our relationship to a constantly evolving environment. The exhibition juxtaposes new artworks in poetic relation with historical and geological artefacts. An early 19th century lava medallion with its accompanying handwritten note (gifted to Alexander von Humboldt, a loan from the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin) and a series of newly commissioned works – drawings created with lava stamps able to withstand temperatures of liquid magma at 1200 degrees – reflect upon the artist’s volcanic sojourns and tell of the changeable nature of landmass, historical events and their interconnection to human experience.