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A0-3959X.91 - 15

Solo show by Constantin Hartenstein.

The solo exhibition A0-3959X.91 - 15 by Constantin Hartenstein, curated by Gilles Neiens, deals in an alchemical-technoid way with industrially produced substances of the post-digital age.

In basins of different sizes, the artist presents a new queer elixir in the premises of Mouches Volantes. This has been extracted from pheromones, the artist’s sweat, and from symbolically charged substances such as lubricant & testogel, poppers, PrEP and G, among others. Some of these lucid liquids are enriched with algae and mysteriously illuminate the sterile-cool setting at night. The clinical relief works hanging on the walls are also made of a mixture of the elixirs and shimmering bluish epoxy resin.

Not for nothing does one feel reminded of a laboratory setting. In an era of hedonistic self-expression and self-optimization, Constantin Hartenstein makes machine-driven and often hidden processes visible. In a performative environment, a young man acts as a laboratory assistant during the opening of the exhibition and first activates the mixture.

Thematized are questions about production processes and hybrid materials that change and redefine the body. How does the body today integrate itself into its artificial-mechanical environment and how does it thereby continue to shape itself? Perhaps some gloomy predictions from science fiction worlds will become reality, or have already become reality?
Negotiated are the still unknown effects that these technological-sensory substances have on the body as a whole and, above all, the question of how the queer body can therefore navigate a transhuman society.

A hand-cast ring containing the extracted elixir can be purchased as part of the exhibition as an edition of 20.

photographs: Dirk Rose
performer: Kamil Schock
studio assistance: Maxim Tur
curated by Gilles Neiens

 

On display
17. November 2021 - 15 January 2022
open daily 3-8pm
MOUCHES VOLANTES, Ebertplatz Passage 1
(former BRUCH & DALLAS)
50668 Köln


Image Caption:
Constantin Hartenstein, BP, 2021

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