Camilla Steinum • Farewell Information • 06.11.2021–29.01.2022

The gallery’s third solo show with Norwegian-born, Berlin-based artist Camilla Steinum takes inspiration from her ongoing investigation of spatial experiences and the construction of information and meanings. The artist presents a multimedia installation, encompassing several objects within the gallery space.

Steinum’s long-term deliberations on the reciprocal effects between objects and living bodies derive from her practice as a sculptor as well as her commitment to investigate certain questions, such as:

In what distinct ways are we, as humans, orientating ourselves within the world, shaping it, and being shaped by the world in return?

Where does the interior start and the exterior end?

How does the meaning we associate with objects influence our spacial experience and movement?

Drawing the viewer in, a carpet is laid out on the floor. Its softness facilitates a subtle intervention to temper the experience. Drops, seemingly frozen in time, are hanging from the ceiling, tenuously reflecting the warm colours of the space. Initially moulded in clay by hand and subsequently cast in nickel silver, the drops are reminiscent of pendulums — playful narratives that connect visually as well as conceptually to seemingly familiar signifiers.

The large-format silkscreen prints on paper that are mounted on the gallery walls also allude to spiritual narratives. However, the prints, referring to oversized playing cards, only reveal their back sides, concealing which cards we are actually looking at.

The colourful line patterns all contain a distinct moment of disruption, making them unique and identifiable against their actual function. The patterns create an almost hypnotising appearance and a visually elusive feeling, resulting in a distraction for the viewers’ eyes to further influence the spatial experience as well as raise questions of knowledge, information, meaning. How do they come about and what forms can they take?

Both the pendulums and the playing cards refer to a wealth of information that is gaining increasing popularity: the human tendency towards spirituality in all its complexity, towards numerical mysticism, superstition, or horoscopes as long-term phenomena to help us learn more about ourselves, the world, and the future.

Throughout Farewell Information, Steinum invites the viewers to move within a space in which her installation distills the essential elements of her unique inquisitive approach to art making, demonstrating her skilful mutability whilst continuing her ongoing artistic investigations of objects, information, and belief systems.