Someone Alive

Exhibition text "Someone Alive", 2021, Artist: ASKI

Cologne-based artist ASKI plays with possibilities offered by new technologies in the visual arts. In his current group of works entitled "Cybernetic Objects", microprocessors, LEDs and displays are combined with everyday objects or integrated into minimalist objects. What is remarkable here is that ASKI emphasises the software running on the microprocessors as an independent component of the artwork - it is not visible, but has a significant influence on the overall work.

In the “Haus der Stiftungen”, Cologne, the Biesenbach Gallery in cooperation with the Seippel Gallery will be showing three objects by ASKI in the "Project Room" from 24 September 2021. With a height of 180 cm, the wall objects are life-size, but their small depth of 3 cm makes them look like pictures. The objects react to the presence of visitors via sensors and can change the light inside. The exhibition objects seem to decide for themselves how to deal with a visitor, they become exhibition subjects.

The exhibition is entitled "Someone Alive", this phrase is the gender-neutral version of the exclamation "Man alive": sailors shout this phrase when they examine a shipwreck and find people still alive on board.

On the outside, the artworks consist of shadow gap frames in which metal plates are suspended. Visitors are allowed to touch these metal plates. This touching of the copper plates can also occasionally trigger changes in the light, but the actual effect of the touch is more long-term, because every fingerprint on the copper leads to permanent traces of the visitors. Every visitor who touches the work thus leaves a trace of himself and through the traces one can observe an ageing process of the artwork.

We as visitors can observe the play of lights or influence the change through our interaction.

Further information can be found at https://aski.zone.