MULTIVERSUM
The totality of parallel worlds. Only by the contact of these worlds the special became visible and the regularities clearly distinguishable: What one saw seemed at one time smooth, unapproachable and fast-moving, at another time raw, timeless and elemental. The two worlds stood opposite each other. Each closed in itself and yet they reacted to each other. They attracted and repelled each other. These magnetic effects were not based on a common intersection, but on the hermetic peculiarities given in each case.
Nora Hansen‘s (*1986) works are of cool elegance. They take their starting point in pop and advertising culture: comic-like set pieces, slogans, quotes from pop greats, and the use of digital image processing produce drawings, images, and posters that coolly mirror and subtly subvert the media zeitgeist. A closer look reveals, for example, that the lettering in one of the images was first an analogue one, namely carved out of Styrofoam, which subsequently underwent digital processes. So is this about re-digitized analog re-constructions of an artificial world?
With his sculptures, paintings, and graphics, Lorenzo Pompa (*1962) creates constellations that he himself calls scenarios. In his work he combines not only different genres, but also different levels of abstraction, from non-representational to figurative. Things come together and interlock in Pompa’s scenarios in such peculiar and surprising ways that supposedly opposites find a strangely suggestive unity. “Mapping the universe” is what he calls one of his pictorial genres. This designation ultimately describes all of his investigations very aptly, no matter how different they may be.
Hansen and Pompa were united above all by the will to create an entire world. In the multiverse, however, the dimensions in which these worlds unfolded differed. They stood dormant and natural next to each other, highlighting the singular peculiarities of the other world.
Photos: Alessandro De Matteis