NOISE SPHERE: FRANKA HÖRNSCHEMEYER

“Information and structure are mutually dependent. I think that information is much more decisive for the outlook of the world than matter. Information is the in-between, the relative space between matter. A complex structure builds up from that arrangement, and that is the information that is within the system.“
—Franka Hörnschemeyer

Galerie Thomas Schulte is pleased to announce that Franka Hörnschemeyer has accepted an invitation to present her work at the gallery. This autumn’s exhibition divides the space into two spheres: on the ground of the Corner Space, the artist has erected one of her spatial sculptures made of rusty-red lattice walls that partition the space. Her work, Transponder, hovers above the sculpture, suspended from the gallery’s nine-meter-high ceiling. The wooden sculpture Rho stands in the adjacent Window Space. Together, the three independent works form a triad, resonating and corresponding with each other, and altering the atmosphere of the space.

Franka Hörnschemeyer is interested in the processual and correlational nature of space. By space as another level, space as structure and, above all, space as the in-between—as information. Hörnschemeyer explores the notions of space by creating architectural constructions—systems in which present, history and future intertwine. To this end, she often works with found construction materials and modular systems, which she uses to reveal the patterns and scale relationships on which much of our built environment is based. All traces of the materials’ previous use are equally important to the artist—who argues that “only a small proportion of the material is matter, the rest is information.”

In the construction industry, formwork elements consisting of iron grids and formwork panels are used for casting concrete walls. For her exhibition, the artist has recycled formwork elements from the construction company Paschal, whose logo is still readable on the panels. The dark red iron grids in Hörnschemeyer’s spatial sculpture become the walls themselves—light and skeletal. The wooden panels that served as the skin of the formwork are reassembled into obtuse, geometric bodies. Three of these cuboid shapes are attached to the structure using flexible hinges so that they swing backwards and forwards. Visitors are invited to enter into and interact with the structure and traverse the dissected space.

Mirroring the levity of the structure on the ground, the two dark large cuboids of the work Transponder 1121 (2021) loom high above visitors’ heads. The two wooden cuboids constructed from used formwork panels have the same volume, but different proportions. They are connected and supported in a circuit via a taut anchor rope—two planet-like bodies in levitation. Presented in the Window Space is the sculpture Rho (2021). This larger-than life sculpture is composed of nine cuboid shapes, constructed with recycled formwork panels. The three larger elements are stacked on top of each other, with two slimmer cuboids attached to them along their central axis attached to the three larger ones on the central axis with hinges. They are flexible and can be set into motion by the visitors, who by interacting with the sculpture alter it and with it the space that surrounds it.

The exhibition’s title, Noise Sphere directs our attention to the acoustic properties of the space. In so doing, the artist considers multiple, co-constitutive sounds: from the sounds that enter the space from the outside, to the ambient noises of the interior space. This intersection of sounds in Hörnschemeyer’s work becomes just as central to the piece as the traces of use on the materials and the thoughts and observations. that viewers bring into the space. Hörnschemeyer thus emphasizes the processual character of space as something non-static but rather something that is constantly “in formation“—in the making.

The exhibition is supported by Paschal.