until 26.09.2026
In the exhibition ‘Between States of Matter’, the artist – who hails from the Kleinwalsertal and lives in New York – visualises processes in a state of limbo, a condition akin to a kind of waiting room. In the nave, Mathias Kessler’s animation refers to the painting ‘The Ice Sea’, which Caspar David Friedrich painted in 1823/24. It depicts a ship being crushed by massive blocks of ice. Kessler’s three-dimensional reconstruction of the painting responds to two centuries of documented temperature rises and glacial retreat. The scene evolves from 1824 to 2024, as the ice slowly melts and the ship gradually disappears. In the sacristy stands a saltwater aquarium containing a human skull, the surface of which is colonised by living corals. The organisms utilise the calcium leaching from the bone and grow onto and into the material, so that the skull is slowly transformed into a different form of matter.
Mathias Kessler – Between States of Matter
until 26.09.2026
Johanniterkirche Feldkirch
6800 Feldkirch
Marktplatz 2
www.johanniterkirche.at
